Moral Responsibility Quotes

Most thoughtful people would agree that morality in the absence of policing is somehow more truly moral than the kind of false morality that vanishes as soon as the police go on strike or the spy camera is switched off, whether the spy camera is a real one monitored in the police station or an imaginary one in heaven.

The world will not be destroyed by those who do evil, but by those who watch them without doing anything.

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

I am a determinist. As such, I do not believe in free will. The Jews believe in free will. They believe that man shapes his own life. I reject that doctrine philosophically. In that respect I am not a Jew.

The famine has been sent by God to teach the Irish a lesson.... The real evil with which we have to contend is not the physical evil of the famine, but the moral evil of the selfish, perverse and turbulent character of the people.

To spare the guilty is to injure the innocent.

The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.

The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who in times of great moral crisis maintain their neutrality

Since 1948 we have been demanding the return of the refugees to their homes. But we ourselves are the ones who encouraged them to leave. Only a few months separated our call to them to leave and our appeal to the United Nations to resolve on their return.

When one acts on pity against justice, it is the good whom one punishes for the sake of the evil; when one saves the guilty from suffering, it is the innocent whom one forces to suffer. There is no escape from justice, nothing can be unearned and unpaid for in the universe, neither in matter nor in spirit—and if the guilty do not pay, then the innocent have to pay it.

I came to join the revolution, not to kill the Cambodian people. Look at me now. Am I a violent person? No. So, as far as my conscience and my mission were concerned, there was no problem.

A man does what he must - in spite of personal consequences, in spite of obstacles and dangers and pressures - and that is the basis of all human morality.

No one is without Christianity, if we agree on what we mean by that word. It is every individual's individual code of behavior by means of which he makes himself a better human being than his nature wants to be, if he followed his nature only. Whatever its symbol - cross or crescent or whatever - that symbol is man's reminder of his duty inside the human race.

Those who are innocent today may be guilty tomorrow.

Compassion towards the wicked – is cruelty to all beings.

Not to punish evil is equivalent to authorizing it.

It is always man's ideas which drive his actions. This has, at times, resulted in great evil; but as we look around us, we cannot doubt that it has resulted in greater good.

Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing.

The first and fiercest punishment ought to fall first on the traitor, second on the enemy. If I had but one bullet and I were faced by both an enemy and a traitor, I would let the traitor have it.

What hurts the victim most is not the cruelty of the oppressor, but the silence of the bystander.

Most of the harm in the world is done by good people, and not by accident, lapse, or omission. It is the result of their deliberate actions, long persevered in, which they hold to be motivated by high ideals toward virtuous ends... ...when millions are slaughtered, when torture is practiced, starvation enforced, oppression made a policy, as at present over a large part of the world, and as it has often been in the past, it must be at the behest of very many good people, and even by their direct action, for what they consider a worthy object.

Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.

Conscience has no more to do with gallantry than it has with politics.

Never do anything against conscience even if the state demands it.

I am free, no matter what rules surround me. If I find them tolerable, I tolerate them; if I find them too obnoxious, I break them. I am free because I know that I alone am morally responsible for everything I do.