John Christopher Quotes

Morality is only moral when it is voluntary.

Morality depends on individual freedom, and it requires some sense to know where to draw the line.

Mankind's greatest gift... is that we have free choice.

...the essential intention is the real sin. A man who cannot choose ceases to be a man.

We decide what is right. Never mind what the people think.

One might rationally argue that individual human beings should be free choose what moral behavior they approve of, and which they don't, subject to the constraints of the law.

If men were born free, they would, so long as they remained free, form no conception of good and evil.

To deny the freedom of the will is to make morality impossible.

I have gained this from philosophy: that I do without being commanded what others do only from fear of the law.

I have always maintained that society has no business dictating morality.

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

Moral liberty is the power of following, in all circumstances, our sense of right and wrong, or of acting in conformity to our reflecting and moral principles, without being controlled by any contrary principles.

I am free, no matter what rules surround me. If I find them tolerable, I tolerate them; if I find them too obnoxious, I break them. I am free because I know that I alone am morally responsible for everything I do.

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

Integrity in the Moment of Choice: Quality of life depends on what happens in the space between stimulus and response.

I don't mean you disregard every rule of your community. I don't go around naked, for example. I don't run through red lights. The little things, I can obey. But the big things- how we think, what we value- those you must choose yourself. You can't let anyone-or any society- determine those for you. ' -Morrie Schwartz

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.

Liberty is the essential precondition for achieving virtue... In order to exercise virtue, we need to have the ability to choose freely.

You want to make your own decisions, but you ought to make those decisions with an eternal perspective.

But think of the glory of the choice! That makes a man a man. A cat has no choice, a bee must make honey. There's no godliness there.

Choice, I've always believed, is all that separates us from animals.

He who preserves a man's life against his will does the same thing as if he slew him.

Man has a choice and it's a choice that makes him a man.

Does God want goodness or the choice of goodness? Is a man who chooses to be bad perhaps in some way better than a man who has the good imposed upon him?

To choose evil is to choose freedom, emancipation from all restraint.