Krzysztof Kieslowski Quotes

If "Thou shalt not covet," and "Thou shalt not steal," were not commandments of Heaven, they must be made inviolable precepts in every society, before it can be civilized or made free.

A different vision of ethics is that of a collection of resources people can use to act better. The resources might be firm rules that could always be relied on. Or they might be ideals that could often be followed without thinking but that sometimes conflicted with one another.

As she read the ten commandments for the first time, a Chinese woman said, "I don't see how anyone can very well get on without them."

As a rule of thumb I say, if Socrates, Jesus and Tolstoy wouldn't do it, don't.

The path of precept is long, that of example short and effectual.

Morality represents for everybody a thoroughly definite and ascertained idea: the idea of human conduct regulated in a certain manner.

It is well for us if we have learned to listen to the sweet persuasion of the Beatitudes, but there are crises in all lives which require also the emphatic "Thou shalt not" of the decalogue which the founders wrote on the gateposts of their commonwealth.

For many people, morality means a set of rules governing the disposition on one's genital organs; or a set of injunctions against lying, stealing, or killing except when such acts are sanctioned by church or state.

I don't want to do anything that violates my own personal code of ethics and morals.

Morally considered, laughter is next to the Ten Commandments.

The rules of prudence, like the laws of the stone tables, are for the most part prohibitive. "Thou shalt not" is their characteristic formula.

The Ten Commandments don't tell you what you ought to do: They only put ideas into your head.

The rigid volunteer rules of right and wrong in sports are second only to religious faith in moral training.

In the past, the respect people had for religion meant that ethical practice was maintained through a majority following one religion or another. But this is no longer the case. We must therefore find some other way of establishing basic ethical principles.

Ye must leave righteous ways behind, not to speak of unrighteous ways.

Search men's governing principles, and consider the wise, what they shun and what they cleave to.

Official morality has always been oppressive and negative: it has said "thou shalt not," and has not troubled to investigate the effect of activities not forbidden by the code.

The law functions as formal embodiment of a moral code, not as free-standing substitute for it.

The truth is, of course, that the curtness of the Ten Commandments is an evidence, not of the gloom and narrowness of a religion, but, on the contrary, of its liberality and humanity. It is shorter to state the things forbidden than the things permitted; precisely because most things are permitted, and only a few things are forbidden.

The first thing to get clear about Christian morality between man and man is that in this department Christ did not come to teach any brand new morality. The Golden Rule of the New Testament (Do as you would be done by) is a summing up of what everyone, at bottom, had always known to be right.

Commandments are opportunities to exercise our agency and to receive blessings.

Morals - all correct moral laws - derive from the instinct to survive. Moral behavior is survival behavior above the individual level.

We have our values from the church, the temple, the mosque. Do not rob, do not murder. But our behaviour changes the minute we go into the corporate place. Suddenly all of this is irrelevant.

The great difficulty about keeping the Ten Commandments is that no man can keep them and be a gentleman.

I am, as I have always been, of the opinion that while the niceties of normal moral constraints should be our guides, they must not be our masters.