Renata Adler Quotes

There is nothing good or evil save in the will.

I've always felt like we're all human beings and we're all basically given the tools to make whatever choices we want to make. How we treat other people. How we treat ourselves. Just the whole philosophy of that and the philosophical logic of that is that we're all capable of great acts of evil, and we're all capable of great acts of good.

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.

Morality pertains only to the sphere of man's free will - only to those actions which are open to his choice.

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

Sanity is not statistical.

T is the will that makes the action good or ill.

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

If we try to define our own moral universe, there's a price for that.

For the more a soul conforms to the sanity of others, the more does it become insane.

I thought you were sane," I said, "but you're just as crazy as the rest of them.

Science, by itself cannot, supply us with an ethic.

A wise man will not leave the right to the mercy of chance, nor wish it to prevail through the power of the majority.

It cannot be called freedom, a freedom which can choose only the right and not the wrong; then that is not freedom.

Faith teaches that there is a right and wrong beyond mere opinion or desire. Most importantly, it teaches us that freedom is not an end in itself, that how freedom is exercised matters as much as freedom itself

We must do right and risk the consequences.

The person who does not make a choice dies in the eyes of the Lord, even though he continues to breathe and to walk about the streets. For a man has to choose, therein lies his strength: in the power of his decisions.

We have all got to exert ourselves a little to keep sane, and call things by the same names as other people call them by.

Virtue also depends on ourselves. And so also does vice. For where we are free to act we are also free to refrain from acting, and where we are able to say No we are also able to say Yes; if therefore we are responsible for doing a thing when to do it right, we are also responsible for not doing it when not to do it is wrong, and if we are responsible for rightly not doing a thing, we are also responsible for wrongly doing it.

Beneath the seemingly rational exterior of our lives is a fear of insanity. We dare not question the values by which we live or rebel against the roles we play for fear of putting our sanity in doubt.

To treat of human actions is to deal wholly with second causes.

Beware of being too rational. In the country of the insane, the integrated man doesn't become king. He gets lynched.

Humans are, as Sartre put it, 'condemned to be free'. To insist that science, or God, objectively defines moral values is to abandon our responsibility as human beings to make such judgments.

The only way to stay sane is to go a little crazy.