John Knoll Quotes

What is done cannot be effaced. We have to act upon a moral field prepared for us ...

My feeling is that the hero has now been defined by phrases like the odious one that we were all raised with - crimes does not pay. Of course it pays, you schmuck. That's not why we don't do it. We don't do it because it is wrong.

There is nothing politically right that is morally wrong.

Morals are in all countries the result of legislation and government; they are not African or Asian or European: they are good or bad.

Morality must relate, at some level, to the well-being of conscious creatures. If there are more and less effective ways for us to seek happiness and to avoid misery in this world - and there clearly are - then there are right and wrong answers to questions of morality.

We are all ready to be savage in some cause. The difference between a good man and a bad one is the choice of the cause.

I've learned a lot about good and evil. They are not always what they appear to be.

Any time the character is in a moral quandary is interesting. That's been true from the Greeks on down.

Conscience has no more to do with gallantry than it has with politics.

I think the greater responsibility, in terms of morality, is where leadership begins.

It is a sin not to do what one is capable of doing.

There is no truth without responsibility following in its wake.

If your morals make you dreary, depend on it, they are wrong.

Life is neither good or evil, but only a place for good and evil.

Many a man renounces morals, but with great difficulty the conception, 'morality.' Morality is the 'idea' of morals, their intellectual power, their power over the conscience; on the other hand, morals are too material to rule the mind, and do not fetter an 'intellectual' man, a so-called independent, a 'freethinker.'

Never let your sense of morals get in the way of doing what's right.

There is no right in acting.

The power to do good is also the power to do harm.

What is moral is what you feel good after, and what is immoral is what you feel bad after.

I believe in a higher power and I believe in good and bad, right and wrong. You sleep in the bed you make.

Men are more accountable for their motives, than for anything else; and primarily, morality consists in the motives, that is in the affections.

Every judgement of conscience, be it right or wrong, be it about things evil in themselves or morally indifferent, is obligatory, in such wise that he who acts against his conscience always sins.

I try not to do anything that's immoral.

Some things must be good in themselves, else there could be no measure whereby to lay out good and evil.

Judge Taney can do many things, but he cannot…change the essential nature of things—making evil good, and good, evil.