Lupe Fiasco Quotes

If goodness can't come from bad things, it makes bad things unbearable.

The problem, of course, was that people did not seem to understand the difference between right and wrong. They needed to be reminded about this, because if you left it to them to work out for themselves, they would never bother. They would just find out what was best for them, and then they would call that the right thing. That's how most people thought.

They all deserve to die. Even you, Mrs. Lovett Even I. Because the lives of the wicked should be made brief For the rest of us death would be relief.

We can assume that most people, most of the time, are moral creatures. But imagine that this morality is like a gearshift that at times gets pushed into neutral. When that happens, morality is disengaged. If the car happens to be on an incline, car and driver move precipitously downhill. It is then the nature of the circumstances that determines outcomes, not the driver's skills or intentions.

Moral sensibilities are nowadays at such cross-purposes that to one man a morality is proved by its utility, while to another its utility refutes it.

To do evil that good may come of it is for bunglers in politics as well as morals.

Why are we talking about this good and evil? They're just names for sides. We know that.

"Politics" per se is absent from my writing but there is usually a moral (if ironic) compass.

I'm offended by the is-ought fallacy, which has been used to justify slavery, women not being allowed to vote, children working in factories.

I shook my head. “I don’t think so. This isn’t a good idea. This isn’t right.” “There’s all kinds of right,” he murmured. “On the spectrum, we’re still in the safe zone.” ... “Definitely right. Usually right,” Patch continued. “Mostly right. Maybe right.

How does something immoral, when done privately, become moral when it is done collectively? Furthermore, does legality establish morality? Slavery was legal; apartheid is legal; Stalinist, Nazi, and Maoist purges were legal. Clearly, the fact of legality does not justify these crimes. Legality, alone, cannot be the talisman of moral people.

You can't slice up morals.

What interest, zest, or excitement can there be in achieving the right way, unless we are enabled to feel that the wrong way is also a possible and a natural way, nay, more, a menacing and an imminent way? And what sense can there be in condemning ourselves for taking the wrong way, unless we need have done nothing of the sort, unless the right way was open to us as well? I cannot understand the willingness to act, no matter how we feel, without the belief that acts are really good and bad.

Philosophy rests on a proposition that whatever is is right. Preaching begins by assuming that whatever is is wrong.

Tolerance cannot afford to have anything to do with the fallacy that evil may convert itself to good.

In philosophy class I think we finally decided that 'good' is an infinitely recursive term - it can't be defined except in terms of itself. Good is good because it's better than bad, though why it's better to be good than bad depends on how you define good, and on and on.

The whole world is incapable of judging either right or wrong. but it is certain that actionless action can judge both right and wrong.

Even if we can agree that some things are natural and some are not, what follows from this? The answer is: nothing. There is no factual reason to suppose that what is natural is good (or at least better) and what is unnatural is bad (or at least worse).

It is sometimes rational to do what is wrong, and sometimes irrational to do what is right

An opinion, right or wrong, can never constitute a moral offense, nor be in itself a moral obligation. It may be mistaken; it may involve an absurdity, or a contradiction. It is a truth; or it is an error: it can never be a crime or a virtue.

Morality is seldom a safe guide for human conduct.

A perverted moral judgment belongs to the dogmatic system.

And don't tell me the end justifies the means because it doesn't. We never reach the end. All we ever get is means. That's what we live with.

Abstractions about right and wrong, whether they are as old as Thou Shalt Not Kill or as modern as Do Your Own Thing, often serve only to confuse and weaken genuine moral decision.