Marya Mannes Quotes

At the end of the day, if there are truly ethical considerations, those have to override scientific considerations.

Nature has no principles. She makes no distinction between good and evil.

Action indeed is the sole medium of expression for ethics.

A kind Providence has placed in our breasts a hatred of the unjust and cruel, in order that we may preserve ourselves from cruelty and injustice. They who bear cruelty, are accomplices in it. The pretended gentleness which excludes that charitable rancour, produces an indifference which is half an approbation. They never will love where they ought to love, who do not hate where they ought to hate.

How you treat the helpless is the real test of morality. Lots of people are flunking that test big time.

I know one thing you don't. I know the difference between Right and Wrong. They didn't teach you that at school.' Rose didn't answer; the woman was quite right: the two words meant nothing to her. Their taste was extinguished by stronger foods--Good and Evil.

Those who choose not to empathize enable real monsters, for without ever committing an act of outright evil ourselves we collude with it through our apathy.

I never condemn wrongdoing in any area.

Right is right, and wrong is wrong, and a body ain’t got no business doing wrong when he ain’t ignorant and knows better.

Of course it was a terrible thing, and the world would be a much better place without someone in it who could do that, but did that mean we had to miss lunch?

When goodness is lost, it is replaced by morality.

You know, there's a right and wrong way to do everything.

Of a truth, Knowledge is power, but it is a power reined by scruple, having a conscience of what must be and what may be. . . .

Morality is not the doctrine of how we may make ourselves happy, but how we may make ourselves worthy of happiness.

There is little evidence that other animals judge the appropriateness of actions that do not directly affect themselves.

Fear is the mother of morality.

The measure of and self-congratulation for our own intelligence should have its basis in our moral behavior as well as our smarts.

The essence of morality is a questioning about morality; and the decisive move of human life is to use ceaselessly all light to look for the origin of the opposition between good and evil.

We are naturally moral beings, but our environments can enhance - or, sadly, degrade - this innate moral sense.

What the statesman is most anxious to produce is a certain moral character in his fellow citizens, namely a disposition to virtue and the performance of virtuous actions.

The sturdiest pillars of human morality are compassion and a sense of justice.

At times, morality can be dismissed as a matter of personal conscience, no matter how widespread its acceptance. Ethics, on the other hand, arises from societal or group commitments to principia of behavior.

The endeavor to understand is the first and only basis of virtue.

I find that people... very few people think that what they're doing is bad, and usually the people who think what they're doing is bad it has more to do with guilt.

The science of morality is about maximizing psychological and social health. It's really no more inflammatory than that.