#morality

Nursery-rhyme morality has gotten me into no end of trouble, largely because it is presented through such fine poetry. Nursery rhymes dramatize the eternal conflict between aesthetics and ethics in a manner that every child can appreciate. There isn’t an adult walking around today that hasn’t been psychologically devastated by them. ↗

— Bauvard

#funny #humor #morality #nursery-rhymes #poetry

Why does IPCA use them if they’re evil?” he asked, confused. “They aren’t evil. They aren’t even really immoral, per se. They’re amoral. They don’t operate on the same level that we do. For a faerie, the only thing that matters is what they want. That’s their good. Anything else is superfluous. So like how they kidnap people, not a big deal—they want the person, they take him. Or killing someone. If you live forever, how much does one mortal life matter in the scheme of things? When you exist outside time, cutting off the forty years a person has left is a non-issue. They don’t even notice. ↗

— Kiersten White

#faeries #lend #morality #life

The choices we make about the lives we live determine the kinds of legacies we leave. ↗

— Tavis Smiley

#legacy #life #morality #life

Morality is neither rational nor absolute nor natural. World has known many moral systems, each of which advances claims universality; all moral systems are therefore particular, serving a specific purpose for their propagators or creators, and enforcing a certain regime that disciplines human beings for social life by narrowing our perspectives and limiting our horizons. ↗

— Friedrich Nietzsche

#morality #life

One of the most moral acts is to create a space in which life can move forward. ↗

— Robert M. Pirsig

#morality #progress #life

Inasmuch as often in this life greater rewards are offered for vice than for virtue, few people would prefer the right to the useful, were they restreined neither by the fear of God nor the expectation of another life ... ↗

— René Descartes

#god #morality #vice #virtue #life

Don’t say bad words; don’t interrupt people; don’t shove; don’t steal; don’t lie. To the child, all these prohibitions appear identical (“It’s not nice”). The distinction between the ethical and the aesthetic will come only later, and gradually. Politeness thus precedes morality, or rather, morality at first is nothing more than politeness: a compliance with usage and its established rules, with the normative play of appearances—a compliance with the world and the ways of the world. ↗

— André Comte-Sponville

#life

The individualism of current economic theory is manifest in the purely self-interested behavior it generally assumes. It has no real place for fairness, malevolence, and benevolence, nor for the preservation of human life or any other moral concern. ↗

— Herman E. Daly

#morality #selfishness #life

May we think of freedom not as the right to do as we please but as the opportunity to do what is right. ↗

— Peter Marshall

#freedom #inspirational #morality #united-states-of-america #freedom

Scepticism is never certain of itself, being less a firm intellectual position than a pose to justify bad behavior. ↗

— Fulton J. Sheen

#immorality #scepticism #sin #life