James Clavell Quotes

Right and wrong becomes more difficult for each of us as we grow older, because the older we get the more we know personally about our own human frailties.

Moral certainty is never more than probability.

One's concern with the ethics of means and ends varies inversely with one's personal interest in the issue ... Any effective means is automatically judged by the opposition as being unethical.

I hear you reproach, "But delay was best, For their end was a crime." Oh, a crime will do As well, I reply, to serve for a test As a virtue golden through and through, Sufficient to vindicate itself And prove its worth at a moment's view! . . . . . . Let a man contend to the uttermost For his life's set prize, be it what it will! The counter our lovers staked was lost As surely as if it were lawful coin; And the sin I impute to each frustrate ghost Is-the unlit lamp and the ungirt loin, Though the end in sight was a vice, I say.

The moral man is as guilty as the rest. His morality cannot save him.

I'm a Utilitarian, so I don't see the rule against lying as absolute; it's always subject to some overriding utility which may prevent its exercise.

The problem is that no ethical system has ever achieved consensus. Ethical systems are completely unlike mathematics or science. This is a source of concern.

Men are more moral than they think and far more immoral than they can imagine.

We don't have some message from God that gives us a list of what's good and what's not good. Obviously, we have to make our own flawed judgments about each thing.

One cannot prescribe to anyone whether he should follow an ethic of absolute ends or an ethic of responsibility.

The foundations of morality are like all other foundations: If you dig too much about them, the superstructure will come tumbling down.

Finally, with regard to actions manifestly bad or criminal, to which a person is forced through fear of some great evil, and especially death; we must lay down as a general rule, that the unhappy circumstances, under which a person labors, may indeed diminish the crime of a man unequal to this trial, who commits a bad action in spite of himself, and against his own inward conviction, yet the action remains intrinsically vicious, and worthy of censure; wherefore it may be, and actually is imputed, unless the exception of necessity can be alleged in the person's favor.

Opinions upon moral questions are more often the expression of strongly felt expediency than of careful ethical reasoning

I don't believe that pure evil exists, personally.

There are no moral victories.

I'm not a moral relativist, I do think at the end of the day there's right and wrong, there's good intentions, and then there's bad paths that you can go on even if you have good intentions and we believe that.

Sooner or later... one has to take sides. If one is to remain human.

Tis a human trait to hate one you have wronged

There are times when the end justifies the means. But when you build an argument based on a whole series of such times, you may find that you've constructed an entire philosophy of evil." --Luke Skywalker

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

Let it judge that nothing is either bad or good which can happen equally to the bad man and the good. For that which happens equally to him who lives contrary to nature and to him who lives according to nature, is neither according to nature nor contrary to nature.

...guilt leads to righteous action, but rarely is it the right action.

And if we can accept that a mother can kill her own child, how can we tell other people not to kill one another?

What’s the difference? Fill a hundred pits with dead Northmen, congratulations, have a parade! Kill one man in the same uniform as you? A crime. A murder. Worse than despicable. Are we not all men? All blood and bone and dreams?

My conscience hath a thousand several tongues, And every tongue brings in a several tale, And every tale condemns me for a villain. Perjury, perjury, in the high'st degree; Murder, stern murder in the dir'st degree, Throng to the bar, crying all, 'Guilty!, guilty!