The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame.
If there's one American belief I hold above all others, it's that those who would set themselves up in judgment on matters of what is "right" and what is "best" should be given no rest; that they should have to defend their behavior most stringently. ... As a nation, we've been through too many fights to preserve our rights of free thought to let them go just because some prude with a highlighter doesn't approve of them
We evaluate others with a Godlike justice, but we want them to evaluate us with a Godlike compassion.
A good man will not engage even in a national cause, without examining the justice of it.
I'm very, very pleased to be cleared of any legal wrongdoing, any hint of any kind of unethical activity there. Very pleased to be cleared of any of that.
As individuals, we will be judged in our lives by the totality of our actions. Not one thing will stand out. And I think that's how we get judged by our colleagues and that's how we get judged by the good lord.
As the strong man exults in his physical ability, delighting in such exercises as call his muscles into action, so glories the analyst in that moral activity which disentangles.
The first time I spoke publicly about the Stanford Prison Experiment, Stanley Milgram told me: "Your study is going to take all the ethical heat off of my back. People are now going to say yours is the most unethical study ever, and not mine.
The characteristic virtue of Englishmen is power of sustained practical activity and their characteristic vice a reluctance to test the quality of that activity by reference to principles.
The task of history is to hold out for reprobation every evil word and deed, and to hold out for praise every great and noble word and deed.
The motives even of our best actions will not always bear examination.
Be not too hasty to trust or to admire the teachers of morality; they discourse like angels, but they live like men.
We must never forget that both good and evil flow from the Bible. It is therefore not above criticism.
we make a great fuss about national conscience, but it consists mainly in insisting upon everyone ascribing our national policy to highly moral motives, rather than in examining what our motives really are.
Scandal is gossip made tedious by morality.
When the evening was over, Anne could not be amused…nor could she help fearing, on more serious reflection, that, like many other great moralists and preachers, she had been eloquent on a point in which her own conduct would ill bear examination.
The precepts of philosophy and of the Hebrew code, laid hold of actions only. (Jesus) pushed his scrutinies into the heart of man, erected his tribunal in the regions of his thoughts, and purified the waters at the fountain head.
Why anyone, by dying, should thereby be declared beyond criticism, innocent of wrongdoing, suddenly filled with virtue and above reproach escapes me.
He that hath a scrupulous conscience is like a horse that is not well weighed; he starts at every bird that flies out of the hedge.
It is the business of a virtuous clergyman to censure vice in every appearance of it.
We should often blush at our noblest deeds if the world were to see all their underlying motives.
You don't get to advertise all the good that your religion does without first scrupulously subtracting all the harm it does and considering seriously the question of whether some other religion, or no religion at all, does better.
