Katherine Anne Porter Quotes

I killed one man to save 100,000.

I realized early that unless you're willing to kill the innocent, you can't win.

The attempt to remove evil from the world by killing a thousand evil - doers, only adds to the evil in the world.

In the real world in which we live, you always have to choose between evils. And in choosing between evils, you have to have moral criteria for how to make those choices.

They tend to be pretty abstract ones then, like doing what will have the best consequences; obviously you wouldn't specify what consequences are best, they may be different in some circumstances, so at a lower, more specific level, you may well get differences.

I'm a Utilitarian, so I don't see the rule against lying as absolute; it's always subject to some overriding utility which may prevent its exercise.

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

You kill strangers deliberately so you don't accidentally kill the people you love.

All moral laws are merely statements that certain kinds of actions will have good effects.

I wanted to play around with the format, really tear it to pieces and shake it up. For example, if Mitch saves someone from drowning, and that person then goes out and releases a virus that kills a million people. Imagine the moral implications of that.

The only objects of practical reason are therefore those of good and evil. For by the former is meant an object necessarily desired according to a principle of reason; by the latter one necessarily shunned, also according to a principle of reason.

If we say yes to something we believe is wrong now, what guarantee is there that the wrong will not be further exacerbated down the line?

An ethical action, like an unethical action, is usually analyzed by politicians purely in pragmatic terms.

To be a utilitarian means that you judge actions as right or wrong in accordance with whether they have good consequences. So you try to do what will have the best consequences for all of those affected.

If the end does not justify the means - what can?

If the end does not justify the means, what does?

Who wills the ends must not shrink from the means.

Contemporary audiences are interested in watching characters navigate ethical challenges and moral dilemmas.

I know I've done the right thing but I couldn't feel worse about it, and I suppose that is part of what it is to lead.

Even for the world's only superpower, the ends don't always justify the means.

There are times when the end justifies the means. But when you build an argument based on a whole series of such times, you may find that you've constructed an entire philosophy of evil." --Luke Skywalker

The death penalty makes us all murderers.

In the interests of economy they condemned hundreds of children to death and I call it murder.

It might or might not be right to kill, but sometimes it is necessary.

Killing ain't fair, but somebody gotta do it.