The role of the intellectual cannot be to excuse the violence of one side and condemn that of the other.

I think God gives every one of us our own will, and unfortunately, some people choose to do evil things with it.

Prejudice of any kind implies that you are identified with the thinking mind. It means you don’t see the other human being anymore, but only your own concept of that human being. To reduce the aliveness of another human being to a concept is already a form of violence.

If co-operation is a duty, I hold that non-co-operation also under certain conditions is equally a duty.

It is better to risk saving a guilty man than to condemn an innocent one.

Virtue is insufficient temptation.

We need to have business leaders who live by deep, strong principles.

What can I know? What ought I to do? What can I hope?

Ordinary morality is innate in my view.

What we have to do, what at any rate it is our duty to do, is to revive the old art of Lying.

It is always a strain when people are being killed. I don’t think anybody has held this job who hasn’t felt personally responsible for those being killed.

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

It is difficult to violently suppress people in the long run, as the example of the Soviet Union and the Eastern European countries has shown.

As a tactic, violence is absurd. No one can compete with the Government in violence, and the resort to violence, which will surely fail, will simply frighten and alienate some who can be reached, and will further encourage the ideologists and administrators of forceful repression.

War settles nothing.

We are justified in enforcing good morals, for they belong to all mankind; but we are not justified in enforcing good manners, for good manners always mean our own manners.

All the interests of my reason, speculative as well as practical, combine in the three following questions: 1. What can I know? 2. What ought I to do? 3. What may I hope?

This was not an act of terrorism, but it was an act of war.

It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right.

What people call impartiality may simply mean indifference, and what people call partiality may simply mean mental activity.

Many religious confessions share common values. They teach that we should do unto others as we would have them do unto us.

I cannot pretend to be impartial about the colours. I rejoice with the brilliant ones, and am genuinely sorry for the poor browns.

All philosophy lies in two words, sustain and abstain.

I have known people who are working class or craftsmen, who happen to be more intellectual than professors.

Justice is itself the great standing policy of civil society; and any eminent departure from it, under any circumstances, lies under the suspicion of being no policy at all.

No weapon has ever settled a moral problem. It can impose a solution but it cannot guarantee it to be a just one.

I do not know how to teach philosophy without becoming a disturber of established religion.

The highest reach of injustice is to be deemed just when you are not.

Honesty is the best policy – when there is money in it.

Justice… is a kind of compact not to harm or be harmed.

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

I grew up in the South under segregation. So, I know what terrorism feels like – when your father could be taken out in the middle of the night and lynched just because he didn’t look like he was in an obeying frame of mind when a white person said something he must do. I mean, that’s terrorism, too.

I think big business is a terrible thing for the spirit of the country, as our spirit is the best thing about us.

Condemn me. It does not matter. History will absolve me.

Injustice is censured because the censures are afraid of suffering, and not from any fear which they have of doing injustice.

The world is too violent right now.

Judges should avoid commenting on a candidate for public office.

A judge sworn to decide impartially can offer no forecasts, no hints, for that would show not only disregard for the specifics of the particular case, it would display disdain for the entire judicial process.

The object of the superior man is truth.

Everyone who wants to do good to the human race always ends in universal bullying.

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.

At his best, man is the noblest of all animals; separated from law and justice he is the worst.

It is curious that physical courage should be so common in the world and moral courage so rare.

The time has come for all evangelists to practice full financial disclosure. The world is watching how we walk and how we talk. We must have the highest standards of morality, ethics and integrity if we are to continue to have influence.

A sword never kills anybody; it is a tool in the killer’s hand.

What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans, and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty or democracy?

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

There is nothing good or evil save in the will.

The computer brings out the worst in some people.

I do think there should be some regulations on AI.

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

The violence in the Bible is appalling.

May you live your life as if the maxim of your actions were to become universal law.

Honesty is for the most part less profitable than dishonesty.

Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain – and most fools do.

The humanists‘ replacement for religion: work really hard and somehow you’ll either save yourself or you’ll be immortal. Of course, that’s a total joke, and our progress is nothing. There may be progress in technology but there’s no ethical progress whatsoever.

Women have a certain sexuality, and I think their bodies are beautiful, and I’m not embarrassed to explore that in a film. But there are things you get offered that are vulgar and violent – just like there’s a side of me that’s vulgar and violent.

The ‚free-floating intellectual‘ may occupy himself with problems because of their inherent interest and importance, perhaps to little effect.

It’s so hard to know what to do when one wishes earnestly to do right.

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

The safest course is to do nothing against one’s conscience. With this secret, we can enjoy life and have no fear from death.