Capital punishment is as fundamentally wrong as a cure for crime as charity is wrong as a cure for poverty.

The honest poor can sometimes forget poverty. The honest rich can never forget it.

Honor and shame from no condition rise. Act well your part: there all the honor lies.

We are much beholden to Machiavel and others, that write what men do, and not what they ought to do.

Above all, always be capable of feeling deeply any injustice committed against anyone, anywhere in the world. This is the most beautiful quality in a revolutionary.

There are no easy answers, but there are simple answers. We must have the courage to do what we know is morally right.

Satan is wiser now than before, and tempts by making rich instead of poor.

You’re morally tainted if you don’t treat both the accuser and the accused with fairness and with respect, and with due process.

I know black people love the idea that we finally have a beautiful, good-looking black president. But if he is doing awful things to us, we should wake up.

It is more from carelessness about truth than from intentionally lying that there is so much falsehood in the world.

To God everything is beautiful, good, and just; humans, however, think some things are unjust and others just.

I know of only one duty, and that is to love.

Richard Nixon was an evil man – evil in a way that only those who believe in the physical reality of the Devil can understand it. He was utterly without ethics or morals or any bedrock sense of decency.

It means, people who are in high and responsible positions, if they go against righteousness, righteousness itself will get transformed into a destroyer.

If I’d written all the truth I knew for the past ten years, about 600 people – including me – would be rotting in prison cells from Rio to Seattle today. Absolute truth is a very rare and dangerous commodity in the context of professional journalism.

The more you can increase fear of drugs and crime, welfare mothers, immigrants and aliens, the more you control all the people.

I don’t stand for the black man’s side, I don‘ t stand for the white man’s side. I stand for God’s side.

The place of justice is a hallowed place.

Let us touch the dying, the poor, the lonely and the unwanted according to the graces we have received and let us not be ashamed or slow to do the humble work.

Where the Mind is biggest, the Heart, the Senses, Magnanimity, Charity, Tolerance, Kindliness, and the rest of them scarcely have room to breathe.

As a kid, I got three meals a day. Oatmeal, miss-a-meal and no meal.

The object is very clear in the fight against racism; you have reasons why you’re opposed to it. But when you’re writing a novel, you don’t want the reader to come out of it voting yes or no to some question. Life is more complicated than that.

Ken Lay, the disgraced former chairman of Enron, found a way to escape his legal problems: He died after being convicted of fraud and conspiracy charges.

All I can say is I am sensitive to discrimination on any basis because I have experienced that upset.

Exclusion is never the way forward on our shared paths to freedom and justice.

To see what is right and not to do it is want of courage, or of principle.

Please don’t make the mistake of thinking that ‚Oryx and Crake‘ is anti-science. Science is a way of knowing, and a tool. Like all ways of knowing and tools, it can be turned to bad uses. And it can be bought and sold, and it often is. But it is not in itself bad. Like electricity, it’s neutral.

I have always found that mercy bears richer fruits than strict justice.

Live one day at a time emphasizing ethics rather than rules.

Some may remember, if you have good memories, that there used to be a concept in Anglo-American law called a presumption of innocence, innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. Now that’s so deep in history that there’s no point even bringing it up, but it did once exist.

The one thing that doesn’t abide by majority rule is a person’s conscience.

Saints should always be judged guilty until they are proved innocent.

I hate victims who respect their executioners.

Morality is of the highest importance – but for us, not for God.

I will not sit in a room with black people when the N word is used. I know it was meant to belittle a person, so I will not sit there and have that poison put on me. Now a black person can say, ‚Oh, you know, I can use this word because I’m black.‘

Nothing can be more abhorrent to democracy than to imprison a person or keep him in prison because he is unpopular. This is really the test of civilization.

I have found men to be more kind than I expected, and less just.

In the game of cricket, a hero is a person who respects the game and does not corrupt the game. The one who doesn’t or corrupts the game, they are the villain. They should be punished, and they have been punished in the past.

If you’re in favour of any policy – reform, revolution, stability, regression, whatever – if you’re at least minimally moral, it’s because you think it’s somehow good for people. And good for people means conforming to their fundamental nature.

The biggest disease today is not leprosy or tuberculosis, but rather the feeling of being unwanted.

I believe it is universally understood and acknowledged that all men will ever act correctly, unless they have a motive to do otherwise.

Our veterans who fall on hard times and find themselves without a home deserve more than just handwringing or kind words. They deserve real help that gets them back on their feet.

A strong argument for the religion of Christ is this – that offences against Charity are about the only ones which men on their death-beds can be made – not to understand – but to feel – as crime.

Justice in the life and conduct of the State is possible only as first it resides in the hearts and souls of the citizens.

Racism is real in this country.

The first decade of the twentieth century was not a great time to be born black and poor and female in St. Louis, Missouri, but Vivian Baxter was born black and poor, to black and poor parents. Later she would grow up and be called beautiful. As a grown woman she would be known as the butter-colored lady with the blowback hair.

I know only that what is moral is what you feel good after and what is immoral is what you feel bad after.

Judge Afiuni has suffered enough. She has been subject to acts of violence and humiliations to undermine her human dignity. I am convinced that she must be set free.

Poverty must not be a bar to learning and learning must offer an escape from poverty.

I am not interested in power for power’s sake, but I’m interested in power that is moral, that is right and that is good.

In various countries and times, leaders of groups that lagged behind, economically and educationally, have taught their followers to blame all their problems on other people – and to hate those other people.

Success in creating AI would be the biggest event in human history. Unfortunately, it might also be the last, unless we learn how to avoid the risks.

The desire to annoy no one, to harm no one, can equally well be the sign of a just as of an anxious disposition.

Who shall decide when doctors disagree, And soundest casuists doubt, like you and me?

If I were a Negro, I’d be fighting, as Martin Luther King fought, for human recognition and justice. I’d rather go down with my flag flying. If you’re weak or crippled, or you can’t speak out or fight back in some way, then people don’t hesitate to treat you badly.

Justice cannot be for one side alone, but must be for both.

I’m not somebody that just wants to hold up a white flag and say, ‚Let’s all just get along.‘ I think people that do horrible things should be held accountable.

Is science of any value? I think a power to do something is of value. Whether the result is a good thing or a bad thing depends on how it is used, but the power is a value.

If you’re in trouble, or hurt or need – go to the poor people. They’re the only ones that’ll help – the only ones.

The world knows that America will never start a war. This generation of Americans has had enough of war and hate… we want to build a world of peace where the weak are secure and the strong are just.

As we know, while our species remains alive, everybody has the sacred duty to be optimistic. Ethically, any other behaviour wouldn’t be admissible.