Moral Consequences Quotes

He [William Gladstone] made his conscience not his guide but his accomplice.

Two urns on Jove's high throne have ever stood, the source of evil one, and one of good; from thence the cup of mortal man he fills, blessings to these, to those distributes ills; to most he mingles both.

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

The idea of heaven is Christianity's way of creating a hell on earth.

Morality depends on individual freedom, and it requires some sense to know where to draw the line.

Revenge... is like a rolling stone, which, when a man hath forced up a hill, will return upon him with a greater violence, and break those bones whose sinews gave it motion.

Evil gains work their punishment.

The moral consequences of totalitarian propaganda...are destructive of all morals because they undermind one of the foundations of all morals: the sense of and respect for truth.

Heaven would be Hell in no time if every cruel, selfish, vicious soul went to Heaven.

The Christian and the Materialist hold different beliefs about the universe. They can't both be right. The one who is wrong will act in a way which simply doesn't fit the real universe. Consequently, with the best will in the world, he will be helping his fellow creatures to their destruction.

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.

Evil is the product of the ability of humans to make abstract that which is concrete.

To deny the freedom of the will is to make morality impossible.

I wept heartily over this poor little deceased soul. It was the first sentient being I had ever killed. I was now a killer. I was now as guilty as Cain. I was sixteen years old, a harmless boy, bookish and religious, and now I had blood on my hands. It's a terrible burden to carry. All sentient life is sacred.

Good and evil, reward and punishment, are the only motives to a rational creature

'Reversible Errors' is about the limits of the law to define who committed ultimate evil, to define what ultimate evil is, to allow the million arbitrary factors to make this a meaningful punishment, and finally to say, 'Are we really accomplishing what we wanted to accomplish? Are those anxieties relieved?' I don't think so.

I wish my countrymen to consider that whatever the human law may be, neither an individual nor a nation can ever commit the leastact of injustice against the obscurest individual without having to pay the penalty for it. A government which deliberately enacts injustice, and persists in it, will at length even become the laughing-stock of the world.

If we try to define our own moral universe, there's a price for that.

But the nature of the universe is such that ends can never justify means. On the contrary, the means always determine the end.

The adulterer dies. An old custom, justice.

What is done cannot be effaced. We have to act upon a moral field prepared for us ...

Let none of us delude himself by supposing that honesty is always the best policy. It is not.

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.

A thing may be morally neutral and yet the desire for that thing may be dangerous.

I think evil is very relative.