Michel de Montaigne Quotes

Life in itself is neither good nor evil, it is the place of good and evil, according to what you make it.

You are to do the choosing here and now during this exciting and wonderful time on earth. Moral agency, the freedom to choose, is certainly one of God's greatest gifts next to life itself. We have the honorable right to choose; therefore, we need to choose the right. This is not always easy.

One's philosophy is not best expressed in words; it is expressed in the choices one makes... and the choices we make are ultimately our responsibility.

Everythings a choice. Nobody's born good. Nobody's born evil. It's always a choice.

There is a choice you have to make in everything you do. So keep in mind that in the end, the choice you make, makes you.

And does man simply choose evil, or does he create it?

Without absolute certainty, what do we do? We do the best we can. Injustice is happening now; suffering is happening now. We have choices to make now. To insist on absolute certainty before starting to apply ethics to life decisions is a way of choosing to be amoral.

Mann was profoundly influenced by two philosophers, Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, who returned to the most ancient of all philosophical questions - "How to live?" - and whose writings offered novel perspectives for considering that question (much more perspective-offering than rigorous argument!)

A moral choice in its basic terms appears to be a choice that favors survival: a choice made in favor of life.

Choice is the essence of ethics: if there were no choice there would be no ethics, no good, no evil; good and evil have meaning only insofar as man is free to choose.

Evil, as evil, can never be chosen; and though evil is often the effect of our own choice, yet we never desire it but under the appearance of an imaginary good.

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

Nature does not bestow virtue; to be good is an art.

People have choices in this life. They should exercise them responsibly.

Hold it the greatest sin to prefer existence to honour, and for the sake of life to lose the reasons for living.

Kill a man who needs killing, and sometimes others pay for it. The question is, was it worth doing it anyway? There's always a balance, you know. Good and evil. Light and Shadow. We would not be human if there wasn't a balance.

If you choose the lesser of two evils, you are still choosing evil.

Every time you make a choice you are turning the central part of you, the part of you that chooses, into something a little different from what it was before. And taking your life as a whole, with all your innumerable choices, all your life long you are slowly turning this central thing either into a heavenly creature or into a hellish creature...

The world of evil is only as evil as we allow it to be.

God isn't about making good things happen to you, or bad things happen to you. He's all about you making choices--exercising the gift of free will. God wants you to have good things and a good life, but He won't gift wrap them for you. You have to choose the actions that lead you to that life.

It is our choice of good or evil that determines our character, not our opinion about good or evil.

Wrong is wrong only when you are at liberty to choose.

Of two evils, it is perhaps less injurious to society, that good doctrine should be accompanied by a bad life, than that a good life should lend its support to a bad doctrine.

I'm not somebody who believes in evil.

Here in St. Cloud’s,” Dr. Larch wrote, “ I have been given the choice of playing God or leaving practically everything up to chance. It is my experience that practically everything is left up to chance much of the time; men who believe in good and evil, and who believe that good should win, should watch for those moments when it is possible to play God – we should seize those moments. There won’t be may