#morality

You know how confusing the whole good-evil concept is for me. ↗

— Jim Butcher

#good #good-and-evil #humor #morality #humor

But she was not even grateful to him for it; nothing good on Pierre's part seemed to her to be an effort, it seemed so natural for him to be kind to everyone that there was no merit in his kindness. ↗

— Leo Tolstoy

#love #merit #morality #love

Anything approaching the change that came over his features I have never seen before, and hope never to see again. Oh, I wasn't touched. I was fascinated. It was as though a veil had been rent. I saw on that ivory face the expression of sombre pride, of ruthless power, of craven terror--of an intense and hopeless despair. Did he live his life again in every detail of desire, temptation, and surrender during that supreme moment of complete knowledge? He cried in a whisper at some image, at some vision--he cried out twice, a cry that was no more than a breath: The horror! The horror! ↗

— Joseph Conrad

#morality #struggle #the-horror #change

So how does God affect justice in this life/economy/reality? A lightening bolt, an angel of death, or by the hand of a human being?" ~R. Alan Woods [2012] ↗

— R. Alan Woods

#justice-without-mercy #law #morality #r-alan-woods #death

Liberty medals...Are they trying to bribe me with coloured ribbons? I wouldn't kill a man for one of those things. Or go and be killed. Any shooting I do is to save my own life, and not for a ribbon and a hunk of bronze. [says Mäkelä] ↗

— Väinö Linna

#killing #morality #war #life

Morality negates life. ↗

— Friedrich Nietzsche

#life

All nationalists have the power of not seeing resemblances between similar sets of facts. A British Tory will defend self-determination in Europe and oppose it in India with no feeling of inconsistency. Actions are held to be good or bad, not on their own merits, but according to who does them, and there is almost no kind of outrage — torture, the use of hostages, forced labour, mass deportations, imprisonment without trial, forgery, assassination, the bombing of civilians — which does not change its moral colour when it is committed by 'our' side . . . The nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, but he has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them ↗

— George Orwell

#nationalism #politics #change

Sustainable change, after all, depends not upon compliance with external mandates or blind adherence to regulation, but rather upon the pursuit of the greater good. ↗

— Douglas B. Reeves

#good #lead #leadership #mandate #morality

Let us with Caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. ↗

— George Washington

#religion #religion

our moral reasoning is plagued by two illusions. The first illusion can be called the wag-the-dog illusion: We believe that our own moral judgment (the dog) is driven by our own moral reasoning (the tail). The second illusion can be called the wag-theother-dog's-tail illusion: In a moral argument, we expect the successful rebuttal of an opponent's arguments to change the opponent's mind. Such a belief is like thinking that forcing a dog's tail to wag by moving it with your hand will make the dog happy. ↗

— Sam Harris

#morality #neuroscience #change