Christopher Moore Quotes

It's immoral to steal, but you can take things.

Conscience is better served by a myth.

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.

It is better to will the good than to know the truth.

There are people who think that honesty is always the best policy. This is a superstition. There are times when the appearance of it is worth six of it.

They know that people need witches; they need the unofficial people who understand the difference between right and wrong, and when right is wrong and when wrong is right. The world needs the people who work around the edges. They need the people who can deal with the little bumps and inconveniences. And little problems. After all, we are almost all human. Almost all of the time.

A moral choice in its basic terms appears to be a choice that favors survival: a choice made in favor of life.

Right and wrong are not the product of census.

I worry that when you start quoting Machiavelli to justify your actions, you have ceased to be one of the good guys. No, quoting Nietzsche does that. Machiavelli is just cool.

I once heard someone say morality was method. Do you hold with that? I suppose you wouldn't. You would say that morality was vested in the aim, I expect. Difficult to know what one's aims are, that's the trouble, specially if you're British.

What is the real relation between happiness and goodness? It is only within a few generations that men have found courage to say that there is none.

Morality is the Science of harmonious relations between intelligent beings.

If Truth is taken away from us, then Right and Wrong are taken from us as well. If we don't know Right and Wrong, then we can't, we won't control ourselves, but will look to someone else to bring order through brute force and raw power. We will be controlled by a tyrant, and we will no longer be free.

That we occasionally violate our own stated moral code does not imply that we are insincere in espousing that code.

The foundation of morality should not be made dependent on myth nor tied to any authority lest doubt about the myth or about the legitimacy of the authority imperil the foundation of sound judgment and action.

Morality is truth in full bloom.

Honesty may be the best policy, but it's important to remember that apparently, by elimination, dishonesty is the second-best policy.

Ethics is inescapable.

After all, why be good? How many will actually believe it of us?

Morals were restrictive, but they were grounded on human experience.

No one will dare maintain that it is better to do injustice than to bear it.

One of them is knowing the difference between Morality and Wisdom. Morality is temporary, Wisdom is permanent… Ho ho. Take that one to bed with you tonight.

Cease being intimidated by the argument that a right action is impossible because it does not yield maximum profits, or that a wrong action is to be condoned because it pays.

The rules of morality are not the conclusion of our reason.

One has only as much morality as one has philosophy and poetry.