Quotes about Morality

The man who damns money has obtained it dishonorably; the man who respects it has earned it.

The worst guilt is to accept an unearned guilt.

A rational man never distorts or corrupts his own standards and judgment in order to appeal to the irrationality, stupidity, or dishonesty of others.

If the rest of them can survive only by destroying us, then why should we wish them to survive? . . . Nothing can make it moral to destroy the best. One can't be punished for being good. One can't be penalized for ability.

Remember that rights are moral principles which define and protect a man's freedom of action, but impose no obligations on other men.

There can be no justification for choosing any part of that which one knows to be evil.

You want to do it? I might. If you offer me enough. Howard—anything you ask. Anything. I'd sell my soul... That's the sort of thing I want you to understand. To sell your soul is the easiest thing in the world. That's what everybody does every hour of his life. If I asked you to keep your soul—would you understand why that's much harder?

Let us destroy, but don't let us pretend that we are commiting an act of virtue.

For centuries, the battle of morality was fought between those who claimed that your life belongs to God and those who claimed that it belongs to your neighbors - between those who preached that the good is self-sacrifice for the sake of ghosts in heaven and those who preached that the good is self-sacrifice for the sake of incompetents on earth. And no one came to say that your life belongs to you and that the good is to live it.

I loathe your ideals because I know no worse injustice than the giving of the undeserved.

To abstain from condemning a torturer, is to become an accessory to the torture and murder of his victims.

Man has been called a rational being, but rationality is a matter of choice — and the alternative his nature offers him is: rational being or suicidal animal. Man has to be man — by choice; he has to hold his life as a value — by choice; he has to learn to sustain it — by choice; he has to discover the values it requires and practice his virtues — by choice. A code of values accepted by choice is a code of morality.