Ethical Choice Quotes

If you are strong and fighting the weak, then if you kill your opponent, then you are a scoundrel... if you let him kill you, then you are an idiot. So here is a dilemma which others have suffered before us, and for which as far as I can see, there is simply no escape.

It is better to suffer wrong than to do wrong, because you can remain the friend of the sufferer; who would want to be the friend of and have to live together with a murderer? Not even another murderer.

Self-sacrifice of one innocent man is a million times more potent than the sacrifice of a million men who die in the act of killing others.

Active Evil is better than Passive Good.

Without freedom there can be no morality.

Do what you feel in your heart to be right — for you'll be criticized anyway. You'll be "damned if you do, and damned if you don't.

doing what is right is easy. The problem is knowing what is right

True liberty consists only in the power of doing what we ought to well, and in not being constrained to do what we ought not to do.

Wars are, of course, as a rule to be avoided; but they are far better than certain kinds of peace.

Freedom consists not in doing what we like, but in having the right to do what we ought.

Courage doesn't come by doing what everybody else says. Courage does by what you know is right.

I'm not saying you did the wrong thing. I'm not even saying it wasn't something I'd thought of doing, myself. But even if it was the just thing to do, or the fitting thing, it still wasn't the right thing.

I would rather miss the mark acting well than win the day acting basely.

Identify the moral dilemma driving the novel. the successful novel will haunt a reader because it deals with some ethical or moral dilemma that makes the reader wonder what he or she would do in the protagonist's place.

Which would be worse - to live as a monster, or to die as a good man?

Shall ignorance of good and ill Dare to direct the eternal will? Seek virtue, and of that possest, To Providence resign the rest.

Only man makes Karma.

Which would prove I'm a monster, Arnie? Sacrificing the people I love for the fight? Or walking away from the fight to save the people i love?

In this world, either you're virtuous or you enjoy yourself. Not both, lady, not both.

I have met thousands and thousands of pro-choice men and women. I have never met anyone who is pro-abortion. Being pro-choice is not being pro-abortion. Being pro-choice is trusting the individual to make the right decision for herself and her family, and not entrusting that decision to anyone wearing the authority of government in any regard.

All decision-making is a values-clarifying exercise.

We have a high moral responsibility to be rational

Strange as my circumstances were, the terms of this debate are as old and commonplace as man; much the same inducements and alarms cast the die for any tempted and trembling sinner; and it fell out with me, as it falls with so vast a majority of my fellows, that I chose the better part and was found wanting in the strength to keep to it.

Purity of soul cannot be lost without consent.

What's worse: to be idle while someone dies, or to be exiled and empty-handed?