Seneca the Younger Quotes

Successful and fortunate crime is called virtue.

When you're talking about villainy, then you're automatically circling around to talk about justice.

Success is the sole earthly judge of right and wrong.

You cannot institute any equality between right and wrong.

I am a citizen of the world, and I have met, in my time, with so many different sorts of virtue, that I am puzzled, in my old age, to say which is the right sort and which is the wrong

As soon as fear, hatred, jealousy and power worship are involved, the sense of reality becomes unhinged. And ... the sense of right and wrong becomes unhinged also. There is no crime, absolutely none, that cannot be condoned when ‘our’ side commits it. Even if one does not deny that the crime has happened, even if one knows that it is exactly the same crime as one has condemned in some other case, even if one admits in an intellectual sense that it is unjustified — still one cannot feel that it is wrong. Loyalty is involved, and so pity ceases to function.

We live in a world where everyone thinks they do the right thing, so they are entitled to do the wrong thing. So ends can justify the means.

The difference is too nice - Where ends the virtue or begins the vice.

Modern morality is all about perception.

I certainly don't know if you could claim that every theft is wrong, but I'll prove to you that every theft is forbidden, by simply locking you up.

Successful crimes alone are justified.

Heaven takes care that no man secures happiness by crime.

Good laws make it easier to do right and harder to do wrong.

Do not be too moral. You may cheat yourself out of much life so.

Good laws are the offspring of bad actions.

I'm always curious how we sometimes have a different point of view when it comes to justice. And that's why people root for 'Dexter.'

Sometimes the right thing gets done for the wrong reason and sometimes, unfortunately, the wrong thing gets done for the right reason.

One cannot prescribe to anyone whether he should follow an ethic of absolute ends or an ethic of responsibility.

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

Because of the diverse conditions of humans, it happens that some acts are virtuous to some individuals … while the same acts are immoral for others …

It is the greatest good to the greatest number which is the measure of right and wrong.

Law is that which commands what is right and prohibits what is wrong.

Law is not self-executing. Unfortunately, at times its execution rests in the hands of those who are faithless to it. And even when its enforcement is committed to those who revere it, law merely deters some human beings from offending, and punishes other human beings for offending. This does not make men good. This task can be performed only by ethics or religion or morality.

No one may do evil that good may come.

There is no man so good that if he placed all his actions and thoughts under the scrutiny of the laws, he would not deserve hanging ten times in his life.