Dinesh D'Souza Quotes

Nature knows no indecencies; man invents them.

For the superior morality, of which we hear so much, we too would desire to be thankful: at the same time, it were but blindness to deny that this superior morality is properly rather an inferior criminality, produced not by greater love of Virtue, but by greater perfection of Police; and of that far subtler and stronger Police, called Public Opinion.

It is the function of vice to keep virtue within reasonable bounds.

It is not easy to do something good, but it is extremely difficult to do something bad.

Laws and customs may be creative of vice; and should be therefore perpetually under process of observation and correction: but laws and customs cannot be creative of virtue: they may encourage and help to preserve it; but they cannot originate it.

I like the English. They have the most rigid code of immorality in the world.

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

In a civilized society, all crimes are likely to be sins, but most sins are not and ought not to be treated as crimes.

Americans use custom, more than written law, to enforce virtue

We value virtue but do not discuss it. The honest bookkeeper, the faithful wife, the earnest scholar get little of our attention compared to the embezzler, the tramp, the cheat.

What is morality in any given time or place? It is what the majority then and there happen to like, and immorality is what they dislike.

Oh, 'tis not my qualities they object to! 'Tis my lack of vice.

Morality is a social necessity

That which is morally wrong will never be politically right.

It's very much simpler to get rid of any written rule you choose than it is an item of customary morality... while laws are preserved on tablets of wood or stone, customary morality is engraved deep in our living souls

Evil, by definition, is that which endangers the good, and the good is that which we perceive as a value.

Much legislation is moral legislation because it conditions the action and the thought of the nation in broad and important spheres of life.

Morality in Europe today is herd-morality.

Nature rejects the monarch, not the man; The subject, not the citizen; for kings And subjects, mutual foes, forever play A losing game into each other's hands, Whose stakes are vice and misery. The man Of virtuous soul commands not, nor obeys.

There is Moral Sense, and there is an Immoral Sense. History shows us that the Moral Sense enables us to perceive morality and how to avoid it, and that the Immoral Sense enables up to perceive immorality and how to enjoy it.

Virtue itself turns vice, being misapplied, And vice sometime's by action dignified

Men's evil manners live in brass: their virtues we write in water.

Conventionality is not morality. Self-righteousness is not religion. To attack the first is not to assail the last.

Honor to a Spaniard, no matter how dishonest, is as real a thing as water, wine, or olive oil. There is honor among pickpockets and honor among whores. It is simply that the standards differ.

I myself have constantly refused to print anything that might countenance vice or promote immorality, though … I might have gotten much money.