#morals

In belief in what? In love with what? In hope for what?—There’s no doubt that these weak people—at some time or another they also want to be the strong people, some day their "kingdom" is to arrive—they call it simply "the kingdom of God" as I mentioned. People are indeed so humble about everything! Only to experience that, one has to live a long time, beyond death—in fact, people must have an eternal life, so they can also win eternal recompense in the "kingdom of God" for that earthly life "in faith, in love, in hope." Recompense for what? Recompense through what? In my view, Dante was grossly in error when, with an ingenuity inspiring terror, he set that inscription over the gateway into his hell:"Eternal love also created me." Over the gateway into the Christian paradise and its "eternal blessedness" it would, in any event, be more fitting to let the inscription stand "Eternal hate also created me"—provided it’s all right to set a truth over the gateway to a lie! For what is the bliss of that paradise? Perhaps we might have guessed that already, but it is better for it to be expressly described for us by an authority we cannot underestimate in such matters, Thomas Aquinas, the great teacher and saint: "In the kingdom of heaven" he says as gently as a lamb, "the blessed will see the punishment of the damned, so that they will derive all the more pleasure from their heavenly bliss. ↗

— Friedrich Nietzsche

#death

We continue to need exhortations to be sympathetic and just, even if we do not believe that there is a God who has a hand in wishing to make us so. We no longer have to be brought into line by the threat of hell or the promise of paradise; we merely have to be reminded that it is we ourselves -- that is, the most mature and reasonable parts of us (seldom present in the midst of our crises and obsessions) -- who want to lead the sort of life which we once imagined supernatural beings demanded of us. An adequate evolution of morality from superstition to reason should mean recognizing ourselves as the authors of our own moral commandments. ↗

— Alain de Botton

#commandments #god #life #morality #morals

The question is not, "Can they reason?" nor, "Can they talk?" but "Can they suffer? ↗

— Jeremy Bentham

#moral #vegetarian #morals

I think the ethics and morals of genetic engineering are very complicated. It intrigues me. ↗

— Roger Spottiswoode

#engineering #ethics #genetic #genetic engineering #i

I have raised the morals and sobriety of the people. ↗

— James Larkin

#morals #people #raised #sobriety

Relativity must replace absolutism in the realm of morals as well as in the spheres of physics and biology. ↗

— Thomas Cochrane

#biology #morals #must #physics #realm

One may as well be asleep as to read for anything but to improve his mind and morals, and regulate his conduct. ↗

— Laurence Sterne

#asleep #conduct #his #improve #may

If your morals make you dreary, depend on it, they are wrong. ↗

— Robert Louis Stevenson

#dreary #make #morals #wrong #you

And a human being whose life is nurtured in an advantage which has accrued from the disadvantage of other human beings, and who prefers that this should remain as it is, is a human being by definition only, having much more in common with the bedbug, the tapeworm, the cancer, and the scavengers of the deep sea. ↗

— James Agee

#morality #morals #right #social-justice #society

It seems it doesn't pay to be good anymore, when people are short-changing you for evil. ↗

— Anthony Liccione

#evil #good-samaritan #intentions #morals #short-changing