Tom Robbins Quotes

The difference between weakness and wickedness is much less than people suppose; and the consequences are nearly always the same.

But the nature of the universe is such that ends can never justify means. On the contrary, the means always determine the end.

D'you know how embarrassing it is to mention good and evil in a scientific laboratory? Have you any idea? One of the reasons I became a scientist was not to have to think about that kind of thing.

Good and evil - I don't believe that there is hanging out there, anywhere, something called good and something called evil.

I regard morality and ideology as the chief cause of human misery.

The end justifies the means. But what if there never is an end? All we have is means.

In logic, there are no morals.

If it's anything that's going to result in suffering to animals or people, then I don't think [the end] justifies the means... Yeah; but then again if you could hurt ten people to save 100 people and there was no option, what would you do? I can't really address that.

With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.

It appears, then, that ethics, as a branch of knowledge, is nothing more than a department of psychologyand sociology.

You can’t reach good ends through evil means, because the means represent the seed and the end represents the tree.

I don't believe in bad. I believe in relativity. The only way we can know what we call good is if there's also something we call bad.

There is a certain kind of morality which is even more alien to good and evil than amorality is.

We will never have peace in the world until men everywhere recognize that ends are not cut off from means, because the means represent the ideal in the making, and the end in process, and ultimately you can't reach good ends through evil means, because the means represent the seed and the end represents the tree.

If goodness has causes, it is not goodness; if it has effects, a reward, it is not goodness either. So goodness is outside the chain of cause and effect.

To say murder is wrong is as much a statement of faith as 'I believe that God said murder is wrong' is a statement of faith

No animal shall kill any other animal WITHOUT CAUSE.

Ethical inquiry has always been motivated by the aim of improving human conduct. It doesn't follow from that that the goal is to produce a complete rule book that would be applicable to all cases.

No one has a right to happiness.

If you think about it seriously, all the questions about the soul and the immortality of the soul and paradise and hell are at bottom only a way of seeing this very simple fact: that every action of ours is passed on to others according to its value, of good or evil, it passes from father to son, from one generation to the next, in a perpetual movement.

You cannot talk about evil without assuming a moral framework.

It is good insofar as it is not evil.

Maybe we could learn a little lesson, maybe this all shine a little light, cause there's no healthy way to mess with the line between wrong and right.

The fault of the utilitarian doctrine is that it mistakes impersonality for impartiality.