Ethical Balance Quotes

In any compromise between food and poison, it is only death that can win. In any compromise between good and evil, it is only evil that can profit.

It is theoretically and practically impossible to build any community apart from love and justice. If only one of these two is focused upon, an inevitable extremism and perversion follow.

The problem was, you couldn't have one without the other. There couldn't be a bad guy unless there was a good guy to create the standard. And there couldn't be a good guy until a bad guy showed just how far off the path he might stray.

The ideal state for a philosopher, indeed, is celibacy tempered by polygamy.

When, in any ethical department, unity is attained between outer demands and inner desires, between nature and conscience, between the needs of society and the individual, the moral formula is void because inner necessity then makes it psychically and physically impossible to break the outer law. Thus, true morality is attained.

Temperance and bravery, then, are ruined by excess and deficiency, but preserved by the mean.

Mercy without justice is the mother of dissolution; justice without mercy is cruelty.

We are double-edged blades, and every time we whet our virtue the return stroke straps our vice. Where is the skillful swordsman who can give clean wounds, and not rip up his work with the other edge?

Kill a man who needs killing, and sometimes others pay for it. The question is, was it worth doing it anyway? There's always a balance, you know. Good and evil. Light and Shadow. We would not be human if there wasn't a balance.

Virtue lies half way between two opposite vices.

Wherefore did he [God] create passions within us, pleasures round about us, but that these rightly tempered are the very ingredients of virtue?

I shall endeavor to enliven morality with wit, and to temper wit with morality.

Justice belongs to those who claim it, but let the claimant beware lest he create new injustice by his claim and thus set the bloody pendulum of revenge into its inexorable motion

He manages to balance Rigor and Mercy.

Paul was not ignorant of Satan's devices, but we are not so wise. Among his most successful devices today are these: exalting tolerance above truth; emphasizing the head more than the heart; making size more important than sort; stressing the positive to the neglect of the negative; putting happiness above holiness; majoring on this world instead of the next.

The artist's duty to himself is a combination of immense responsibility and immense irresponsibility. I think those two interlock.

Most virtue lies between two vices.

In a free society, it is hard for 'good' people to do 'good', but that is a small price to pay for making it hard for 'evil' people to do 'evil', especially since one man's good is another's evil

The amiable is a duty most certainly, but must not be exercised at the expense of any of the virtues. He who seeks to do the amiable always, can only be successful at the frequent expense of his manhood.

I don't think there's anything in the compromise that means that there's a clash of ethics.

Sanity is all that stands between good and evil.

In this world, there is no absolute good, no absolute evil," the man said. "Good and evil are not fixed, stable entities, but are continually trading places. A good may be transformed into an evil in the next second. And vice versa. Such was the way of the world that Dostoevsky depicted in The Brothers Karamazov. The most important thing is to maintain the balance between the constantly moving good and evil. If you lean too much in either direction, it becomes difficult to maintain actual morals. Indeed, balance itself is the good.

The balance of private good and general welfare is at the bottom of civilized morals; but the morals of the Heroic Age are founded on individuality, and on nothing else.

One must choose in all things a mean just and good.

We are the victims of the world's most comprehensive robbery. Life demands a balance. It's all right if we do a little robbing now.