Nadine Gordimer Quotes

With a great moral issue involved, neutrality does not serve righteousness; for to be neutral between right and wrong is to serve wrong.

I have to do what's right.

Morality may consist solely in the courage of making a choice.

There comes a point when a man must refuse to answer to his leader if he is also to answer to his own conscience.

doing what is right is easy. The problem is knowing what is right

The only obligation which I have a right to assume is to do at any time what I think right.

Every generation will be challenged morally once in their life about its government, and they will have to say where they stand.

In the face of evil, detachment is a dubious virtue.

Integrity in the Moment of Choice: Quality of life depends on what happens in the space between stimulus and response.

It is a wicked thing to be neutral between right and wrong.

To discuss evil in a manner implying neutrality, is to sanction it.

Let not any one pacify his conscience by the delusion that he can do no harm if he takes no part, and forms no opinion. Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing.

There are some situations one simply cannot be neutral about, because when you are neutral you are an accomplice. Objectivity doesn't mean treating all sides equally. It means giving each side a hearing.

The refusal to take sides on great moral issues is itself a decision. It is a silent acquiescence to evil. The Tragedy of our time is that those who still believe in honesty lack fire and conviction, while those who believe in dishonesty are full of passionate conviction.

I'm a human being with a conscience, and when I see murder, I cannot stand by, and I have to call the murdered the murdered, and I have to call the murderers the murderers.

We can now destroy or we can cherish-the choice is ours.

In order to be true to one's conscience and true to God, a righteous man has no alternative but to refuse to cooperate with an evil system.

Neutrality is no favorite with Providence, for we are so formed that it is scarcely possible for us to stand neuter in our hearts, although we may deem it prudent to appear so in our actions

A man must stand up for what he believes in - especially in this culture war between good and evil.

You can't be neutral on a moving train.

Those who don't fight evil hate those who do; and those who don't fight real evils make up little evils

The battle between good and evil is endlessly fascinating because we are participants every day.

Men do not sufficiently realize that their future is in their own hands. Theirs is the task of determining first of all whether they want to go on living or not. Theirs is the responsibility, then, for deciding if they want merely to live, or intend to make just the extra effort required for fulfilling, even on this refractory planet, the essential function of the universe, which is a machine for the making of gods.

Who, I ask you, can take, dare take, on himself the rights, the duties, the responsibilities of another human soul?

If, while I hear the wild shriek of the slave mother robbed of her little ones, I do not open my mouth, am I not guilty?