#oral

The difficulty of looking at a system like natural selection if you have any sort of moral sense yourself, is almost what makes it beautiful. ↗

— Paul Bettany

#any #beautiful #difficulty #like #looking

We would, however, perform an injustice to the bourgeois women's rights movement if we would regard it as solely motivated by economics. No, this movement also contains a more profound spiritual and moral aspect. ↗

— Clara Zetkin

#aspect #bourgeois #contains #economics #however

How marriage ruins a man! It is as demoralizing as cigarettes, and far more expensive. ↗

— Oscar Wilde

#demoralizing #expensive #far #how #man

We proclaim human intelligence to be morally valuable per se because we are human. If we were birds, we would proclaim the ability to fly as morally valuable per se. If we were fish, we would proclaim the ability to live underwater as morally valuable per se. But apart from our obviously self-interested proclamations, there is nothing morally valuable per se about human intelligence. ↗

— Gary L. Francione

#birds #fish #humans #intelligence #morally-valuable

He knew what retributions your devils are liable to bring for the way you treat your wife and women or behave while your father is on his deathbed, what you ought to think of your pleasure, of acting like a cockroach; he had the intelligence for the comparison. He had the intelligence to be sublime. But sublimity can't exist only as a special gift of the few, due to an accident of origin, like being born an albino. If it were, what interest would we have in it? ↗

— Saul Bellow

#intelligence

Some people's blameless lives are to blame for a good deal. ↗

— Dorothy L. Sayers

#conduct-of-life #double-standards #hypocrisy #morality #social-norms

Achievement of your happiness is the only moral purpose of your life, and that happiness—not pain or mindless self-indulgence—is the proof of your moral integrity, since it is the proof and the result of your loyalty to the achievement of your values. ↗

— Ayn Rand

#individualism #life #morals #objectivism #purpose

Morality and legality have nothing to do with one another. I'm more than fine with breaking a law if it disagrees with my values and morals. ↗

— Ashly Lorenzana

#choices #law #legality #life #morality

Pegging your contentment to the overall state of the world rather than of your own life: the basis of morality, or a sort of madness? ↗

— Alain de Botton

#life #madness #morality #world #life

True love is like ghosts, which everybody talks about and few have seen. ↗

— François de La Rochefoucauld

#moral #philosophy #reflections #love