Leo Tolstoy Quotes

Polygamy is abhorrent to the sentiments and feelings of the civilized world.

What they need is a little immorality in their lives. Then they wouldn't be so busy looking for it in other people's.

When I would work freelance in production in Chicago, there were a lot of times when I was working for cheap, bad people, and I was working for slave wages anyway, so there were some times when I might have filled out a couple of blank taxi receipts and kept some petty cash. But like I say, I was very selective. It was only people that I thought were assholes. The people that I liked I went far and above saving them money, much less taking it. But that's it. I'm pretty moral. I don't even like stealing jokes.

The ability to subordinate an impulse to a value is the essence of the proactive person. Reactive people are driven by feelings, by circumstances, by conditions, by their environment. Proactive people are driven by values - carefully thought about, selected and internalized values.

People with no morals often considered themselves more free, but mostly they lacked the ability to feel or love.

IMMORAL, adj. Inexpedient. Whatever in the long run and with regard to the greater number of instances men find to be generally inexpedient comes to be considered wrong, wicked, immoral.

We have to condemn publicly the very idea that some people have the right to repress others... When we neither punish nor reproach evildoers ... we are ripping the foundations of justice from beneath new generations.

Most people who have grown up introverted in this very extroverted culture of ours have had painful experiences of feeling like they are out of step with what's expected of them.

People shouldn't have to earn kindness. They should have to earn cruelty.

Conservatives say the government can't end poverty by force, but they believe it can use force to make people moral. Liberals say government can't make people be moral, but they believe it can end poverty. Neither group attempts to explain why government is so clumsy and destructive in one area but a paragon of efficiency and benevolence in the other.

But would you kindly ponder this question: What would your good do if evil didn't exist, and what would the earth look like if all the shadows disappeared? After all, shadows are cast by things and people. Here is the shadow of my sword. But shadows also come from trees and living beings. Do you want to strip the earth of all trees and living things just because of your fantasy of enjoying naked light? You're stupid.

We've seen in Europe after the recent terrorist attacks a certain retrogression in human rights. It depends on how threatened the Turks feel. For example, Turkey became much more tolerant towards Kurdish nationalists when the killing of Turkish soldiers stopped in southeastern Turkey and body bags stopped arriving. Now, since June there's been a revival of Kurdish attacks on Turkish troops - something like 150 people have been killed by terrorists supplied from and operating out of bases in northern Iraq. So Turks are feeling much less tolerant of Kurdish nationalism.

I love making people smile. I get so much energy through interacting and feeling like I've made a difference, a small difference.

The killing of innocent people is a sin.

How you get work done is by exploiting yourself and your feelings, and sometimes people get in the way.

You can't deny that religion has done some good. It organizes lots of anti-poverty programs and soup kitchens and missionary work. But I would say that, first of all, all those things can be accomplished without religion. You can be ethical, somebody who does the right thing without feeling that he has to in order to get his ass saved in the next life.

Nothing frightens the 'Jews' more than a perfect unity in others: the unity of feeling in a movement, in a people. That is why they will always be for 'democracy' which has but one advantage, and that one for the nation's enemy. For democracy will break up the unity and spirit of a people.

Movies are more likely than literature to reach deep feelings in people.

For me any moment in front of a crowd is embarrassing, because I can't stand being in front of people. I'm probably one of the worst public speakers. I try to avoid it, but there are times when it's just too rude not to do it. But there really isn't a moment that's not embarrassing for me if I'm going to stand up in front of a crowd.

People in distress never think that you feel enough.

God is more concerned with the state of people's hearts than He is with the state of their feelings.

Young people believe that regret is something you will never feel if you simply do as you please, but sometimes it is a matter of degree.

The Bible is big in the religion, treating people as you want to be treated.

Nothing in the outer world makes you feel any way. You decide what you want to feel, and then use outer people and events as permission slips to execute your feeling agenda.