Leo Tolstoy Quotes

Properly understood, then, the desire to act justly derives in part from the desire to express most fully what we are or can be, namely free and equal rational beings with the liberty to choose.

Reason has never failed men. Only force and repression have made the wrecks in the world.

There is no rational creature which is not capable both of good and evil

Man is born a tabula rasa; he must learn how to choose the ends that are proper for him and the means that he must adopt to attain them. All this must be done by his reason.

Reason can no more influence the will, and operate as a motive, than the eyes which show a man his road can enable him to move from place to place, or that a ship provided with a compass can sail without a wind.

The more I thought about human nature, the more I saw how our tragic inclination for sin/mistakes causes us to use our minds to rationalize our action.

It is a prejudice to think that morality is more favourable to the development of reason than immorality.

Reason can never be the absolute dictator of man's mental or moral economy.

A man must either imitate the vicious or hate them.

Rationality tied to moral decency is the most powerful joint instrument for good that our planet has ever known.

Over the last few years, I've been focusing on questions having to do with the self, and questions having to do with morality. I'm very interested in why we do good things, or bad things, and where moral judgments come from.

All human beings search for either reasons to be good, or excuses to be bad.

We become moral when we are unhappy.

To hold a pen is to be at war.

A lasting order cannot be established by bayonets.

The Bible does not isolate war, as if it were something separate and unique and quite apart, as we tend to do in our thinking. It is but one of the manifestations of sin, one of the consequences of sin.

Whether one believes in evolution, intelligent design, or Divine Creation, one thing is certain. Since the beginning of history, human beings have been at war with each other, under the pretext of religion, ideology, ethnicity and other reasons. And no civilization has ever willingly given up its most powerful weapons.

Morality binds people into groups. It gives us tribalism, it gives us genocide, war, and politics. But it also gives us heroism, altruism, and sainthood.

Our moral traditions developed concurrently with our reason, not as its product.

I don't think you can in any way export culture with guns or tanks.

During the time men live without a common power to keep them all in awe, they are in that conditions called war; and such a war, as if of every man, against every man.

Right reason is stronger than force.

Force and mind are opposites; morality ends where a gun begins.

Nothing is ever done in this world until men are prepared to kill one another if it is not done.

The world is ruled by violence, or at least the imminent threat of violence. It always has been.