Those who excel in virtue have the best right of all to rebel, but then they are of all men the least inclined to do so.

Morality is not the doctrine of how we may make ourselves happy, but how we may make ourselves worthy of happiness.

Strength was the virtue of paganism; obedience is the virtue of Christianity.

Good jokes are gems. A good idea is hard to come by. I couldn’t give them to someone else, even for money. It just wouldn’t seem right.

Only on paper has humanity yet achieved glory, beauty, truth, knowledge, virtue, and abiding love.

We are the people our parents warned us about.

It doesn’t take a majority to make a rebellion; it takes only a few determined leaders and a sound cause.

To be is to do.

Do not be too moral. You may cheat yourself out of much life so.

There is no principle worth the name if it is not wholly good.

Evil is whatever distracts.

Virtue she finds too painful an endeavour, content to dwell in decencies for ever.

It makes a great deal of difference whether one wills not to sin or has not the knowledge to sin.

Ethics is nothing else than reverence for life.

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

All philosophy lies in two words, sustain and abstain.

The virtue of justice consists in moderation, as regulated by wisdom.

We are all ready to be savage in some cause. The difference between a good man and a bad one is the choice of the cause.

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

There never was a truly great man that was not at the same time truly virtuous.

We might come closer to balancing the Budget if all of us lived closer to the Commandments and the Golden Rule.

It is better to take what does not belong to you than to let it lie around neglected.

Glory follows virtue as if it were its shadow.

Polygamy: An endeavour to get more out of life than there is in it.

You say it is the good cause that hallows even war? I say unto you: it is the good war that hallows any cause.

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

Can anything be stupider than that a man has the right to kill me because he lives on the other side of a river and his ruler has a quarrel with mine, though I have not quarrelled with him?

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.

Charity creates a multitude of sins.

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

When one has the feeling of dislike for evil, when one feels tranquil, one finds pleasure in listening to good teachings; when one has these feelings and appreciates them, one is free of fear.

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

Know then this truth, enough for man to know virtue alone is happiness below.

The year 2100 will see eugenics universally established. In past ages, the law governing the survival of the fittest roughly weeded out the less desirable strains. Then man’s new sense of pity began to interfere with the ruthless workings of nature. As a result, we continue to keep alive and to breed the unfit.

You cannot make a sinner into a saint by killing him. He who does not live as a saint here will never live as a saint hereafter.

Let’s pray that the human race never escapes from Earth to spread its iniquity elsewhere.

I can do no other than be reverent before everything that is called life. I can do no other than to have compassion for all that is called life. That is the beginning and the foundation of all ethics.

You can rebel in different ways. Civil disobedience is rebelling. As long as it’s peaceful, of course.

The pursuit of truth does not permit violence on one’s opponent.

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.

Compassion, in which all ethics must take root, can only attain its full breadth and depth if it embraces all living creatures and does not limit itself to mankind.

Each of us has a vision of good and of evil. We have to encourage people to move towards what they think is good… Everyone has his own idea of good and evil and must choose to follow the good and fight evil as he conceives them. That would be enough to make the world a better place.

But the relationship of morality and power is a very subtle one. Because ultimately power without morality is no longer power.

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.

Act that your principle of action might safely be made a law for the whole world.

Successful and fortunate crime is called virtue.

To enjoy good health, to bring true happiness to one’s family, to bring peace to all, one must first discipline and control one’s own mind. If a man can control his mind he can find the way to Enlightenment, and all wisdom and virtue will naturally come to him.

Regardless of what society says, we can’t go on much longer in the sea of immorality without judgment coming.

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.

Trust should be the basis for all our moral training.

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

No cause justifies the deaths of innocent people.

States are not moral agents.

Compassion is the basis of morality.

Should surveillance be usable for petty crimes like jaywalking or minor drug possession? Or is there a higher threshold for certain information? Those aren’t easy questions.

Justice means minding one’s own business and not meddling with other men’s concerns.

One must not cheat anyone, not even the world of its victory.

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

One who is injured ought not to return the injury, for on no account can it be right to do an injustice; and it is not right to return an injury, or to do evil to any man, however much we have suffered from him.

Happiness is a virtue, not its reward.

True religion is real living; living with all one’s soul, with all one’s goodness and righteousness.