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

It’s better to be good than evil, but one achieves goodness at a terrific cost.

States are not moral agents, people are, and can impose moral standards on powerful institutions.

To compromise simply means that you go a tiny bit below what you know is right.

Evil is the product of the ability of humans to make abstract that which is concrete.

To see what is right and not to do it is want of courage, or of principle.

No cause justifies the deaths of innocent people.

I don’t do any vulgar movements.

T stands for being nice. T stands for manners. T stands for being polite.

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

In Christianity neither morality nor religion come into contact with reality at any point.

Principles have no real force except when one is well-fed.

Ought we not to ask the media to agree among themselves a voluntary code of conduct, under which they would not say or show anything which could assist the terrorists‘ morale or their cause while the hijack lasted.

The man who has won millions at the cost of his conscience is a failure.

It is my conviction that killing under the cloak of war is nothing but an act of murder.

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.

The rise of capitalist practice and morality brought with it a radical revision of how the commons are treated, and also of how they are conceived.

There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written.

A strong argument for the religion of Christ is this – that offences against Charity are about the only ones which men on their death-beds can be made – not to understand – but to feel – as crime.

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

Woe to him that claims obedience when it is not due; woe to him that refuses it when it is.

What the statesman is most anxious to produce is a certain moral character in his fellow citizens, namely a disposition to virtue and the performance of virtuous actions.

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

There is no satisfaction in hanging a man who does not object to it.

Understand, when you eat meat, that something did die. You have an obligation to value it – not just the sirloin but also all those wonderful tough little bits.

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

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?

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

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

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.

Faced with what is right, to leave it undone shows a lack of courage.

Such is the feebleness of humanity, such is its perversity, that doubtless it is better for it to be subject to all possible superstitions, as long as they are not murderous, than to live without religion.

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

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

Conscientious people are apt to see their duty in that which is the most painful course.

I do not believe in the God of theology who rewards good and punishes evil.

I always invest my own money in the companies that I create. I don’t believe in the whole thing of just using other people’s money. I don’t think that’s right. I’m not going to ask other people to invest in something if I’m not prepared to do so myself.

Humanitarianism consists in never sacrificing a human being to a purpose.

The most important of all revolutions, a revolution in sentiments, manners and moral opinions.

To educate a man in mind and not in morals is to educate a menace to society.

Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws.

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?

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.

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?

Politeness is to human nature what warmth is to wax.

Honesty is for the most part less profitable than dishonesty.

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 do one’s own duty, however defective it may be, than to follow the duty of another, however well one may perform it. He who does his duty as his own nature reveals it, never sins.

Morality is the herd-instinct in the individual.

A fit body gives you confidence. And there’s nothing more impressive than a great attitude, which you can wear on your sleeve. But you’ll have to remember the difference between being rude and being confident.

Every sin is the result of a collaboration.

A few years ago, the city council of Monza, Italy, barred pet owners from keeping goldfish in curved bowls… saying that it is cruel to keep a fish in a bowl with curved sides because, gazing out, the fish would have a distorted view of reality. But how do we know we have the true, undistorted picture of reality?

America… just a nation of two hundred million used car salesmen with all the money we need to buy guns and no qualms about killing anybody else in the world who tries to make us uncomfortable.

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

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

I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for law.

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

We tell lies, yet it is easy to show that lying is immoral.

Live one day at a time emphasizing ethics rather than rules.

Happiness and moral duty are inseparably connected.

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