P. D. James Quotes

People don't get better, they just get smarter. When you get smarter you don't stop pulling the wings off flies, you just think of better reasons for doing it.

To be moral involves taking a position towards that matrix, thinking critically about what is taken for granted.

If the ability to tell right from wrong should have anything to do with the ability to think, then we must be able to 'demand' its exercise in every sane person no matter how erudite or ignorant.

The only kind of trouble I've ever been in is when I was stealing eggs when I was little. I think I know right from wrong.

Most people don't have any association in their minds with what they do and with ethics. They think they somehow moved past the questions of morality or values or ethics, and that's something that I've never imagined to be true.

If you think that moral reasoning is something we do to figure out the truth, you’ll be constantly frustrated by how foolish, biased, and illogical people become when they disagree with you.

Good people can't out-think evil, cause evil thinks of things good folks can't think of.

The act of acting morally is behaving as if everything we do matters.

Though we may now think some sins light and little, if the Lord awaken the conscience, we shall feel even the smallest sin heavy upon our souls.

Keep in mind, Eragon, that no one thinks himself a villain, and few make decisions they think are wrong. A person may dislike his choice, but he will stand by it because, even in the worst circumstances, he believes that it was the best option available to him at the time.

Conscience is the internal perception of the rejection of a particular wish operating within us.

I think of the need for more wisdom in the world, to deal with the knowledge that we have. At one time we had wisdom, but little knowledge. Now we have a great deal of knowledge, but do we have enough wisdom to deal with that knowledge?

The street kid in me says, "Grab the money and run - who cares who it's from! Don't think about whatever you have to do for it or when you have to do it!

While one is asleep one cannot do anything that is good. Virtue is impossible in unconsciousness, only sin is possible. Unconsciousness is the source of sin.

It is a prejudice to think that morality is more favourable to the development of reason than immorality.

We do wrong willfully when we fail to think hard about whether what we're doing is right.

The Bible teaches that all sin begins with sinful thinking.

Conscience is the reason employed about questions of right and wrong.

The first idea that the child must acquire, in order to be actively disciplined, is that of the difference between good and evil.

You know, as I've grown older, my ideas about sin have changed. I used to believe that sins were things you did, but I don't think that now. I think sins are what you ignore.

Well, every little boy thinks he invented sin. Virtue we think we learn, because we are told about it. But sin is our own designing.

The issues of the choice between right and wrong has to be an ongoing concern for everybody, at every age. There is no magical point in a human life when anyone is or becomes immune to the second-by-second choice to do right instead of wrong.

Little would be wanting to the happiness of life, if every man could conform to the right as soon as he was shown it.

I think in general the ends do not justify the means.

Right, wrong, good, bad, heaven, hell. I think that is the theme of my life. I think you have to know both in order to honestly choose one. So I'm familiar with both sides of the fence.