I object to violence because when it appears to do good, the good is only temporary; the evil it does is permanent.

In matters of conscience, the law of the majority has no place.

Honor is the reward of virtue.

If I hit a man, his head is gonna go into the bleachers.

In any decision for action, when you have to make up your mind what to do, there is always a ‚should‘ involved, and this cannot be worked out from, ‚If I do this, what will happen?‘ alone.

The former colonies, in Latin America in particular, have a better chance than ever before to overcome centuries of subjugation, violence and foreign intervention, which they have so far survived as dependencies with islands of luxury in a sea of misery.

Play not with paradoxes. That caustic which you handle in order to scorch others may happen to sear your own fingers and make them dead to the quality of things.

I don’t use Twitter for bad.

Hell isn’t merely paved with good intentions; it’s walled and roofed with them. Yes, and furnished too.

All the commandments: You shall not commit adultery, you shall not kill, you shall not steal, you shall not covet, and so on, are summed up in this single command: You must love your neighbor as yourself.

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

Cowardice asks the question, is it safe? Expediency asks the question, is it politic? Vanity asks the question, is it popular? But conscience asks the question, is it right? And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but one must take it because it is right.

Violence can succeed, as Americans know well from the conquest of the national territory. But at terrible cost. It can also provoke violence in response, and often does.

The only excuse for war is that we may live in peace unharmed.

I’ve never been a manipulator, even in my bachelor days. I never wanted to do things to people that could catch up with me later on.

Of what use is a philosopher who doesn’t hurt anybody’s feelings?

Trouble brews when we steal from the poor and give to the rich.

If the Great Way perishes there will morality and duty. When cleverness and knowledge arise great lies will flourish. When relatives fall out with one another there will be filial duty and love. When states are in confusion there will be faithful servants.

Ethics is in origin the art of recommending to others the sacrifices required for cooperation with oneself.

How could man rejoice in victory and delight in the slaughter of men?

The next time someone tells you we can trim the budget by cutting aid, I hope you will ask whether it will come at the cost of more people dying.

Integrity has no need of rules.

I would never do a commercial if I thought it was offensive to anyone.

Reverence for life affords me my fundamental principle of morality.

That old law about ‚an eye for an eye‘ leaves everybody blind. The time is always right to do the right thing.

The worst evil of disregard for some law is that it destroys respect for all law.

There is a higher court than courts of justice and that is the court of conscience. It supercedes all other courts.

Virtue is insufficient temptation.

I’ve had just about everything punched. I’ve had things grabbed that just shouldn’t be grapped.

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

High moral character is not a precondition for great moral accomplishments.

The thing that alarms me is that there are so many clergymen who say that the so-called ‚new morality‘ is all right. They say we’re living in a new generation; let’s be relevant, let’s change God’s law. Let’s say that adultery is all right under certain circumstances; fornication’s all right under certain circumstances. If it’s ‚meaningful.‘

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.

Charity creates a multitude of sins.

Guilt for being rich, and guilt thinking that perhaps love and peace isn’t enough and you have to go and get shot or something.

People who treat other people as less than human must not be surprised when the bread they have cast on the waters comes floating back to them, poisoned.

When you have to kill a man, it costs nothing to be polite.

I can hardly eat meat because it has to look like something what it was not when it was alive.

Non-cooperation with evil is as much a duty as is cooperation with good.

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.

Sooner or later, jihadist-style terror and WMD are going to come together and the consequences could be horrendous.

Every fact is related on one side to sensation, and, on the other, to morals. The game of thought is, on the appearance of one of these two sides, to find the other: given the upper, to find the under side.

I think most defense attorneys know, to some extent, their clients are guilty.

I can not believe that war is the best solution. No one won the last war, and no one will win the next war.

Ethics is nothing else than reverence for life.

Art, like morality, consists in drawing the line somewhere.

There’s no difference between one’s killing and making decisions that will send others to kill. It’s exactly the same thing, or even worse.

We have got to change our ethics and our financial system and our whole way of understanding the world. It has to be a world in which people live rather than die; a sustainable world. It could be great.

When you think of the sort of things that happen when a genocide happens, it’s again not people who are intrinsically evil.

To terrify children with the image of hell… to consider women an inferior creation. Is that good for the world?

He who does not prevent a crime when he can, encourages it.

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.

What is moral is what you feel good after, and what is immoral is what you feel bad after.

The least initial deviation from the truth is multiplied later a thousandfold.

Of course, animals have to be killed for food or to prevent their doing injury to others or to property. But such killing is too often carried out without regard to the pain inflicted.

A good politician is quite as unthinkable as an honest burglar.

No notice is taken of a little evil, but when it increases it strikes the eye.

Violent men have not been known in history to die to a man. They die up to a point.

Morality which depends upon the helplessness of a man or woman has not much to recommend it. Morality is rooted in the purity of our hearts.

A man dies when he refuses to stand up for that which is right. A man dies when he refuses to stand up for justice. A man dies when he refuses to take a stand for that which is true.

The fact is that a man who wants to act virtuously in every way necessarily comes to grief among so many who are not virtuous.