Gustave Flaubert Quotes

I am a moralist. I worry.

Ignoring moralities is always undesirable, but doing so systematically is reallyworrisome.

I've participated in meetings where there were concerns by ethical experts. There is no clear solution.

I had artists that refused to work on Chappie if they were working on a design that actually said Denel on the side of the thing. But anyway, it's the blurring of fiction and reality that was appealing and I certainly did not want them to be in the movie and not be themselves.

What would our world be like if we ceased to worry about 'right' and 'wrong,' or 'good' and 'evil,' and simply acted so as to maximize well-being, our own and that of others? Would we lose anything important?

A moral choice in its basic terms appears to be a choice that favors survival: a choice made in favor of life.

Those who experiment on animals should never be able to quiet their own conscience by telling themselves that these cruelties have a worthy aim.

In some cases, lack of full knowledge or holistic view, that is also part of the problem. But mainly lack of moral principle. So long you have this genuine sort of concern, well being of other. That's the foundation of moral principle.

When President Clinton starts talking about what is moral, as he did when recommending a national law banning human cloning, it's time for us to lock up our daughters.

There is only one Art, whose sole criterion is the power, the authenticity, the revelatory insight, the courage and suggestiveness with which it seeks its truth. ... Thus, from the standpoint of the work and its worth it is irrelevant to which political ideas the artist as a citizen claims allegiance, which ideas he would like to serve with his work or whether he holds any such ideas at all.

You have to help another person. But it's not right to play God with masses of people. To be God you have to know what you're doing. And to do any good at all, just believing you're right and your motives are good isn't enough.

Good and evil exist only in terms of the happiness or suffering they create in ourselves and others

The propensity to avoid moral considerations was producing not simply a politically illiterate and authoritarian society, but one that was increasingly saturated in violence and a culture of cruelty. Needless to say, all of these forces intensified the increasing militarization and corporatization of higher education, along with the privatizing of everyday life.

There could conceivably be circumstances in which an experiment on an animal stands to reduce suffering so much that it would be permissible to carry it out even if it involved harm to the animal... [even if] the animal were a human being.

My concern is that somebody would make a decision against Christianity because of Mr. Trump's behavior.

Morality binds and blinds.

The artist should preach nothing-not even his own autonomy. His art should speak its own truth, and in so doing it will be in harmony with every other kind of truth- moral, metaphysical, mystical.

Two fixed ideas can no more exist together in the moral world than two bodies can occupy one and the same place in the physical world.

Truth and right are above utility in all realms of thought and action.

Economics and ethics have little in common.

The ethical debates are like stones in a stream. The water runs around them. You haven't seen any biological technologies held up for one week by any of these debates.

Legality alone is no guide for a moral people. There are many things in this world that have been, or are, legal but clearly immoral. Slavery was legal. Did that make it moral? South Africa’s apartheid, Nazi persecution of Jews, and Stalinist and Maoist purges were all legal, but did that make them moral?

Morality is always the product of terror; its chains and strait-waistcoats are fashioned by those who dare not trust others, because they dare not trust themselves, to walk in liberty.

Art is the response to the demand for entertainment, for the stimulation of our senses and imagination, and truth enters into it only as it subserves these ends.

I am, as I have always been, of the opinion that while the niceties of normal moral constraints should be our guides, they must not be our masters.