Samuel Butler Quotes

Must we always do our duty? If so, how are we always to know what is our duty?

If a man cannot tell what he wants to do, then he must find out what he ought to do. If desire has become complicated, then hold fast to duty.

It is often said that second thoughts are best. So they are in matters of judgment but not in matters of conscience.

Conscience without judgment is superstition.

doing what is right is easy. The problem is knowing what is right

Conscience that isn't hitched up to common sense is a mighty dangerous thing.

It is a sin not to do what one is capable of doing.

When we talk about self-confrontations, we are speaking about moral issues rather than social issues.

Though many have tried, no one has ever yet explained away the decisive fact that science, which can do so much, cannot decide what it ought to do.

When it's a moral grey zone, the audience has to think about what they feel and what they think is right or wrong. You want to affect your audience and make them think.

There is nothing in the whole frame of man which seems to me so unaccountable as that thing called conscience.

Should I be the one to play God? We're both about the same age, but we grew up in different neighborhoods.

All of us have moments in our lives when we have to choose between what we know is right and what we feel obligated to do.

I consider myself a fairly ethical individual while I do have a lot of dichotomies within me. We're all victims of our own hypocrisy at times.

Reason often makes mistakes, but conscience never does.

They are focused on whether they can do something. They never think whether they should do something.

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.

There is nothing good or evil save in the will.

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

At the end of the day, if there are truly ethical considerations, those have to override scientific considerations.

If in doubt, don't. If still in doubt, do what's right.

Conscience is a coward, and those faults it has not strength enough to prevent it seldom has justice enough to accuse.

Without ethics, man has no future. This is to say, mankind without them cannot be itself. Ethics determine choices and actions and suggest difficult priorities.

To what extent is any given man morally responsible for any given act? We do not know.

Never let your sense of morals get in the way of doing what's right.