William McIlvanney Quotes

there are risks you'll take for yourself because you know that if your plan goes wrong, it'll be too late for regrets. but if you risk the lives of others and fail, you'll have a lifetime to regret it.

There's a constant contradiction between what feels good and what feels right. But you live with decisions that you make in your life.

When you choose the lesser of two evils, always remember that it is still an evil.

In Survivor and Finder's Fee, it is about what you would do if you could get away with it. Survivor is about your own integrity and where you draw your own ethical and moral lines. There are no rules.

I think that quite often you can only find a choice between bad and worse. But I think it's worth making the effort, and I like to expose my characters to that sort of situation.

If you have difficulties making a decision, choose the lesser of the two evils.

Invite characters of surprising and moral character, or at least those who grapple with what is right or those who make decisions that shock.

Perhaps it is better to be irresponsible and right than to be responsible and wrong.

It's hard to regret making the choice that you think is right.

The choice before human beings, is not, as a rule , between good and evil but between two evils. You can let the Nazis rule the world : that is evil; or you can overthrow them by war , which is also evil. There is no other choice before you, and whichever you choose you will not come out with clean hands.

Take one, and you cannot take the other. But neither path is safe. Which way would you walk — the way of hard truths or the way of fine lies?

So?" Bob said. "Hat up, go kill her. Problem solved." "Bob," I said. "You can't just go around killing people." "I know. That's why you should do it." "No, no. I can't go around killing people, either.

Freedom is a ladder: one side of the ladder reaches hell, the other side touches heaven. It is the same ladder; the choice is yours.

The doing evil to avoid an evil cannot be good.

Sometimes you have to do what’s wrong in order to do what’s right.

When one acts on pity against justice, it is the good whom one punishes for the sake of the evil; when one saves the guilty from suffering, it is the innocent whom one forces to suffer. There is no escape from justice, nothing can be unearned and unpaid for in the universe, neither in matter nor in spirit—and if the guilty do not pay, then the innocent have to pay it.

Every act has both good and evil results. The best we can do is lean to the light.

Oh, no. It costs a lot more than your life. To murder innocent people?" says Peeta. "It costs everything you are.

If you choose the lesser of two evils, you are still choosing evil.

There comes a moment in every life when a choice must be made between right and wrong, between good and evil, between light and darkness. These decisions are made in an instant, but with repercussions that last a lifetime.

Obama said he went to Libya because of his conscience. Did anyone ever wrestle with his conscience and lose?

I never know which is worse: the sorrow when you hit the bird or the shame when you miss it.

It is sometimes rational to do what is wrong, and sometimes irrational to do what is right

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.

I'm not saying you did the wrong thing. I'm not even saying it wasn't something I'd thought of doing, myself. But even if it was the just thing to do, or the fitting thing, it still wasn't the right thing.