The word ‚good‘ has many meanings. For example, if a man were to shoot his grandmother at a range of five hundred yards, I should call him a good shot, but not necessarily a good man.

An act has no ethical quality whatever unless it be chosen out of several all equally possible.

Modesty forbids what the law does not.

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

The Christian’s Bible is a drug store. Its contents remain the same, but the medical practice changes.

I just usually go with my own taste. If I like something, and it happens to be against the law, well, then I might have a problem.

Woe to the makers of literal translations, who by rendering every word weaken the meaning! It is indeed by so doing that we can say the letter kills and the spirit gives life.

Sin cannot be conceived in a natural state, but only in a civil state, where it is decreed by common consent what is good or bad.

I don’t use Twitter for bad.

Note, besides, that it is no more immoral to directly rob citizens than to slip indirect taxes into the price of goods that they cannot do without.

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.

A business that makes nothing but money is a poor business.

We all have the duty to do good.

Man’s true nature being lost, everything becomes his nature; as, his true good being lost, everything becomes his good.

Sin, also for those who don’t have faith, exists when one goes against one’s conscience. To listen to and obey it means, in fact, to decide in face of what is perceived as good or evil. And on this decision pivots the goodness or malice of our action.

I am a just man.

States should have the right to enact laws… particularly to end the inhumane practice of ending a life that otherwise could live.

The story being told in ‚Star Wars‘ is a classic one. Every few hundred years, the story is retold because we have a tendency to do the same things over and over again. Power corrupts, and when you’re in charge, you start doing things that you think are right, but they’re actually not.

If there is no God, everything is permitted.

Laws control the lesser man… Right conduct controls the greater one.

Truly, I would not hang a dog by my will, much more a man who hath any honesty in him.

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

Advertising is a racket, like the movies and the brokerage business. You cannot be honest without admitting that its constructive contribution to humanity is exactly minus zero.

The generality of men are naturally apt to be swayed by fear rather than reverence, and to refrain from evil rather because of the punishment that it brings than because of its own foulness.

Honor is the reward of virtue.

If you’re not going to be rewarded for your virtues, and instead you’re going to be punished for them, then what’s your motivation to continue?

When a man assumes a public trust he should consider himself a public property.

Those who forget good and evil and seek only to know the facts are more likely to achieve good than those who view the world through the distorting medium of their own desires.

What you do not want done to yourself, do not do to others.

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.‘

Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job.

A lot of us grow up and we grow out of the literal interpretation that we get when we’re children, but we bear the scars all our life. Whether they’re scars of beauty or scars of ugliness, it’s pretty much in the eye of the beholder.

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.

Sometimes I think that there’s a fine line between impressionistic and messy.

I think what made it difficult for people to get, and still makes it difficult for people to get, is the theatrical nature of the work and the fact that, my music doesn’t exist without the performance-art element.

Morality is simply the attitude we adopt towards people whom we personally dislike.

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.

I don’t have to see a murder in order to condemn murder.

There is no distinctly American criminal class – except Congress.

Tolerance is the virtue of the man without convictions.

The precepts of the law are these: to live honestly, to injure no one, and to give everyone else his due.

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.

One great use of words is to hide our thoughts.

Any religion that professes to be concerned about the souls of men and is not concerned about the slums that damn them, the economic conditions that strangle them and the social conditions that cripple them is a spiritually moribund religion awaiting burial.

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.

Doing what’s right isn’t the problem. It is knowing what’s right.

It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets.

I confess I enjoy democracy immensely. It is incomparably idiotic, and hence incomparably amusing.

Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement. For even the very wise cannot see all ends.

If we cut up beasts simply because they cannot prevent us and because we are backing our own side in the struggle for existence, it is only logical to cut up imbeciles, criminals, enemies, or capitalists for the same reasons.

Yes, there is a terrible moral in ‚Dorian Gray‘ – a moral which the prurient will not be able to find in it, but it will be revealed to all whose minds are healthy. Is this an artistic error? I fear it is. It is the only error in the book.

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?

Sometimes there are no good guys. There are no bad guys. It seems like everybody is in the middle.

To be is to do.

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.

Mankind is not likely to salvage civilization unless he can evolve a system of good and evil which is independent of heaven and hell.

Of all virtues and dignities of the mind, goodness is the greatest, being the character of the Deity; and without it, man is a busy, mischievous, wretched thing.

If a man watches three football games in a row, he should be declared legally dead.

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

Never do anything against conscience even if the state demands it.

Every sin is the result of a collaboration.