The use of the atomic bomb, with its indiscriminate killing of women and children, revolts my soul.

Pre-emptive war might fall within the framework of international law.

The number, the industry, and the morality of the priesthood, and the devotion of the people have been manifestly increased by the total separation of the church from the state.

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.

The violence in the Bible is appalling.

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

In defense of our persons and properties under actual violation, we took up arms. When that violence shall be removed, when hostilities shall cease on the part of the aggressors, hostilities shall cease on our part also.

Poverty is the worst form of violence.

So far as I am concerned, I could not be accused of having set eyes, or having wished to set eyes, upon Darius‘ wife: on the contrary, I have refused even to listen to those who spoke to me of her beauty.

I do think there should be some regulations on AI.

A person should not be too honest. Straight trees are cut first and honest people are screwed first.

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.

Ingratitude is the essence of vileness.

There are no moral phenomena at all, but only a moral interpretation of phenomena.

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

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

The computer brings out the worst in some people.

One may no more live in the world without picking up the moral prejudices of the world than one will be able to go to hell without perspiring.

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.

There is a moral obligation that those who have should give to those who don’t.

Sin is geographical.

Colombia has been the leading western recipient of U.S. arms and training as violence has grown through the ’90s.

People who truly understand what is meant by self-reliance know they must live their lives by ethics rather than rules.

Do FBI Agents and FBI directors have political beliefs? Sure they do. But they’re not supposed to act on them.

Injustice is relatively easy to bear; what stings is justice.

Every art and every inquiry, and similarly every action and choice, is thought to aim at some good; and for this reason the good has rightly been declared to be that at which all things aim.

When I do good I feel good, when I do bad I feel bad, and that’s my religion.

Labor to keep alive in your breast that little spark of celestial fire, called conscience.

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

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.

I have gained this from philosophy: that I do without being commanded what others do only from fear of the law.

Of two evils, choose neither.

In the case of Yugoslavia v. NATO, one of the charges was genocide. The U.S. appealed to the court, saying that, by law, the United States is immune to the charge of genocide, self-immunized, and the court accepted that, so the case proceeded against the other NATO powers, but not against the United States.

The first rule of business is: Do other men for they would do you.

Some of the generals are saying, ‚We’re making progress. We are clearing an area.‘ But you really don’t defeat the Taliban by clearing an area. They move.

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.

When I was president, I announced and I still maintain that I can live with Roe v. Wade. I did everything I possibly could as president under that ruling, which I don’t think ought to be changed, to minimize the need for abortions. I think every abortion is a result of a horrible series of errors on the part of people involved.

Honor has not to be won; it must only not be lost.

I remember at the age of five travelling on a trolley car with my mother past a group of women on a picket line at a textile plant, seeing them being viciously beaten by security people. So that kind of thing stayed with me.

The target of preventive war must have several characteristics. It must be virtually defenceless; it must be important enough to be worth the trouble; it must be possible to portray it as the ultimate evil and an imminent threat to our survival.

Rather leave the crime of the guilty unpunished than condemn the innocent.

Every war when it comes, or before it comes, is represented not as a war but as an act of self-defense against a homicidal maniac.

For good or for ill, air mastery is today the supreme expression of military power and fleets and armies, however vital and important, must accept a subordinate rank.

Without a moral framework, there is nothing left but immediate self-indulgence by some and the path of least resistance by others. Neither can sustain a free society.

It has actually been suggested that warfare may have been the principle evolutionary pressure that created the huge gap between the human brain and that of our closest living relatives, the anthropoid apes. Whole groups of hominids with inferior brains could not win wars and were therefore exterminated.

It is better to die than to preserve this life by incurring disgrace. The loss of life causes but a moment’s grief, but disgrace brings grief every day of one’s life.

A man is ethical only when life, as such, is sacred to him, that of plants and animals as that of his fellow men, and when he devotes himself helpfully to all life that is in need of help.

The Army was always big on Clausewitz, the Prussian; the Navy on Alfred Thayer Mahan, the American; and the Air Force on Giulio Douhet, the Italian. But the Marine Corps has always been more Eastern-oriented. I am much more comfortable with Sun-tzu and his approach to warfare.

Rights that do not flow from duty well performed are not worth having.

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

To live outside the law, you must be honest.

Don’t lie about anything, ever. Lying leads to Hell.

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

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

War is evil, but it is often the lesser evil.

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.

Conscience is the inner voice that warns us that someone might be looking.

All the screen cowboys behaved like real gentlemen. They didn’t drink, they didn’t smoke. When they knocked the bad guy down, they always stood with their fists up, waiting for the heavy to get back on his feet. I decided I was going to drag the bad guy to his feet and keep hitting him.

Some like to think that a keen appreciation of art can actually make us better people – more just, more moral, more sensitive, more understanding. Perhaps that is true – in certain rare, isolated cases.

Is it not enough to know the evil to shun it? If not, we should be sincere enough to admit that we love evil too well to give it up.

The level of destruction and terror and violence carried out by the powerful states far exceeds anything that can imaginably can be done by groups that are called terrorists and subnational groups.