Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes

You can't disobey the rules every time you disapprove. However, when you're considering something that constitutes an extreme abridgement of your rights, conscience is the court of last resort.

The difference is too nice - Where ends the virtue or begins the vice.

Good morals lead to good laws.

Every society and religion has rules, for both have moral laws. And the essence of morality consists, as in art, of drawing the line somewhere.

Good men must not obey the laws too well.

It is necessary to distinguish between the virtue and the vice of obedience.

When the world’s run by fools it’s the duty of intelligence to disobey.

That which is not just, is not Law; and that which is not Law, ought not to be obeyed.

Our virtues are often, in reality, no better than vices disguised.

Is everything right because the law allows it?

The ethics of sex is a thorny problem. Each of us is forced to grope for a solution he can live with - in the face of preposterous, unworkable, and evil code of so-called 'Morals.' Most of us know the code is wrong, almost everybody breaks it. But we pay Danegeld by feeling guilty and giving lip service. Willy-nilly, the code rides us, dead and stinking, an albatross around the neck.

"One of the advantages of having laws is the pleasure one may take in breaking them. We here are not children, Mr. Gurgeh." Hamin waved the pipestem round the tables of people. "Rules and laws exist only because we take pleasure in doing what they forbid, but as long as most of the people obey such proscriptions most of the time, they have done their job; blind obedience would imply we are - ha!" - Hamin chuckled and pointed at the drone with the pipe - "no more than robots!"

Things like rebellion and resistance to authority are absolutely as much a part of the human experience as love and cars are, and it's a part that doesn't get covered very much in pop music.

As Angelo discovered in Measure for Measure, nothing corrupts like virtue.

It would not be wicked to love me." "It would to obey you.

If nature does not ratify law, then all the virtues may lose their sway.

Every group, every system has a set of values and morals and when you get outside those, then the alarms ring. I was politically incorrect to 95% of the country; luckily my 5% had the bread to come see me.

Which is more misshapen,--religion without virtue, or virtue without religion?

Adultery is a most conventional way to rise above the conventional.

Right... is the child of law.

As soon as she (woman) begins to be ashamed of what she ought not, she will not be ashamed of what she ought.

It is not human to be without shame and without desire.

Let me tell you what justice is. Justice is the law. And that man's feeble attempt to lay down the principles of deceny.

Woman is the most moral element in all humanity.

Rather suffer an injustice than commit one.