Harold Pinter Quotes

No one wanted me to be a conscientious objector. My parents certainly didn't want it. My teacher and mentor, Joe Brearley, didn't want it. My friends didn't want it. I was alone.

Some guy refuses to fight and we call that the sin, but he's standing up for what he believes in and that seems pretty damned American to me.

I am prepared to die but there is no cause for which I am prepared to kill.

That was luck: I should not then have been a conscientious objector; but I am quite sure that the abominations of war would have made me one, as soon as I got to the front.

Many a man will have the courage to die gallantly, but will not have the courage to say, or even to think, that the cause for which he is asked to die is an unworthy one.

Fidelity to conscience is inconsistent with retiring modesty. If it be so, let the modesty succumb. It can be only a false modesty which can be thus endangered.

I am a Quaker. And as everyone knows, Quakers, for 300 years, have, on conscientious ground, been against participating in war. I was sentenced to three years in federal prison because I could not religiously and conscientiously accept killing my fellow man.

I cannot consistently, with self respect, do other than I have, namely, to deliberately violate an act which seems to me to be a denial of everything which ideally and in practice I hold sacred.

Maybe I'll learn how, but the only thing I can do is turn down parts that would hurt my conscience.

It is better to be killed than to kill.

We've all done actions in our lives where we compromise what we believe in. And if we keep doing it, there's no way back, no pride to hold on to.

Men of most renowned virtue have by transgressing most truly kept the law.

I am, now as before, of the opinion that I did the best that I could do for my nation. I therefore do not regret my conduct and will bear the consequences that result from my conduct.

If my doing the right thing will cost me my seat, they can take this job and shove it.

Unless the character is suffering from tremendous self doubt or pangs of conscience, you have to get morally behind the character and their values.

When it was not very comfortable, politically, for me, I said things which lots of people didn't like, some of them may have liked. I said my beliefs, my truth, and my convictions, and that's how I am going to continue to do in the future.

The only obligation which I have a right to assume is to do at any time what I think right.

I don't fight for much, but when I fight for something, it's usually because I think I'm going to be right.

I stand up for what is right even if it puts me in a political conundrum. Supporting Senator Sanders was one of those moments when the status quo said 'Uh uh, bad girl.'

Don't ever silence your morality to be a part of anything.

Doing the right thing is a decision, which in many cases means you stand alone.

You are so afraid of losing your moral sense that you are not willing to take it through anything more dangerous than a mud-puddle.

Today, whether it is a student who holds a sit-in to get the army recruiters off his campus, or the mother of a dead soldier who refuses to leave the front gate of the president's ranch, we continue to be saved by brave people who risk ridicule and rejection but end up turning huge tides of public opinion in the direction of righteousness. We owe them enormous debts of gratitude. It is not easy to stand up for what is right, especially when everyone else is afraid to leave the comfortable path of conformity.

If every soldier refused to take arms ... there would be no wars; but no one has the courage to be the first to live according to Christ and Socrates, because in a world of opportunists they would be martyred.

From long familiarity, we know what honor is. It is what enables the individual to do right in the face of complacency and cowardice. It is what enables the soldier to die alone, the political prisoner to resist, the singer to sing her song, hardly appreciated, on a side street.