Moral Accountability Quotes

We've all made bad decisions, but they haven't always been resulting in the deaths of innocent people.

Oh people, know that you have committed great sins. If you ask me what proof I have for these words, I say it is because I am the punishment of God. If you had not committed great sins, God would not have sent a punishment like me upon you!

If you had not committed great sins, God would not have sent a punishment like me upon you.

Every country has the government it deserves.

Rather judge a person by his actions than by his words; because many act badly and speak splendidly.

Those who do not confront evil resent those who do.

We are free to choose our actions, . . . but we are not free to choose the consequences of these actions.

[M]an is condemned to be free. Condemned, because he did not create himself, in other respect is free; because, once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does. The Existentialist does not believe in the power of passion. He will never agree that a sweeping passion is a ravaging torrent which fatally leads a man to certain acts and is therefore an excuse. He thinks that man is responsible for his passion.

Both good and evil, when they are full grown, become retrospective...That is what mortals misunderstand. They say of some temporary suffering, 'No future bliss can make up for it,' not knowing that Heaven, once attained, will work backwards and turn even that agony into a glory. And of some sinful pleasure they say 'Let me but have this and I'll take the consequences': little dreaming how damnation will spread back and back into their past and contaminate the pleasure of the sin.

Every society gets the kind of criminal it deserves. What is equally true is that every community gets the kind of law enforcement it insists on.

The rain ...falls upon the just and the unjust alike; a thing which would not happen if I were superintending the rain's affairs.

Anyone entrusted with power will abuse it if not also animated with the love of truth and virtue, no matter whether he be a prince, or one of the people.

People do terrible things all the time, but we don’t regularly disown our humanity. We disavow the terrible things.

Bloody instructions, which, being taught, return to plague the inventor.

Making matters worse is people's natural inclination to be easy on themselves, judging themselves according to their good intentions-while holding others to a higher standard and judging them by their worst actions.

People used to behave morally because they thought God was always watching - in some ways God today is the collective, and the collective is watching.

An ethic is not international until it is internationally acknowledged and practiced as the rule, exceptions to which are visited with disgrace if not with punishment.

Where all are guilty, no one is; confessions of collective guilt are the best possible safeguard against the discovery of culprits, and the very magnitude of the crime the best excuse for doing nothing.

In public, as well as private life, the only way to prevent being ridiculed or censured, is to avoid all ridiculous or wicked measures, and to pursue such only as are virtuous and worthy. If any man thinks he has been ridiculed, upon any of our public theatres, let him examine his actions he will find the cause, let him alter his conduct he will find a remedy

Those who grant sympathy to guilt, grant none to innocence.

Let not any one pacify his conscience by the delusion that he can do no harm if he takes no part, and forms no opinion. Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing.

The ancient man approached God (or even the gods)as the accused person approaches his judge. For the modern man the roles are reversed. He is the judge: God is in the dock. He is quite a kindly judge: if God should have a reasonable defense for being the god who permits war, poverty, and disease, he is ready to listen to it. The trial may even end in God's acquittal. But the important thing is that Man is on the bench and God is in the dock.

Once I did bad and that I heard ever. Twice I did good, but that I heard never.

I can't bring myself to believe in a God with a personality like my own. I base that on the paucity of lightning attacks on people who deserve it.

O kings, exercise your power then boldly, for it is divine and salutary for human kind, but exercise it with humility. You are endowed with it from without. At bottom it leaves you feeble, it leaves you mortal, it leaves you sinners, and charges you before God with a very heavy account.