#rig

In any moment of decision, the best thing you can do is the right thing. The worst thing you can do is nothing." [The Information Technology Management Reform Act of 1995: Hearing before the Subcommittee on Oversight of Government Management and the District of Columbia of the Committee on Governmental Affairs (1996)] ↗

— Theodore Roosevelt

#choices #decision #decisiveness #inaction #right-and-wrong

Let's make a law that gay people can have birthdays, but straight people get more cake--you know, to send the right message to kids. ↗

— Bill Maher

#gay-rights #law

But I don't want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness, I want sin.' 'In fact,' said Mustapha Mond, 'you're claiming the right to be unhappy.' 'All right then,' said the Savage defiantly, 'I'm claiming the right to be unhappy.' 'Not to mention the right to grow old and ugly and impotent; the right to have syphilis and cancer; the right to have too little to eat; the right to be lousy; the right to live in constant apprehension of what may happen tomorrow; the right to catch typhoid; the right to be tortured by unspeakable pains of every kind.' There was a long silence. 'I claim them all,' said the Savage at last. Mustapha Mond shrugged his shoulders. "You're welcome," he said. ↗

— Aldous Huxley

#freedom #happiness #rights #unhappiness #freedom

Well, you have said that you were quite certain I was not a serious anarchist. Does this place strike you as being serious?" "It does seem to have a moral under all its gaiety," assented Syme; "but may I ask you two questions? You need not fear to give me information, because, as you remember, you very wisely extorted from me a promise not to tell the police, a promise I shall certainly keep. So it is in mere curiosity that I make my queries. First of all, what is it really all about? What is it you object to? you want to abolish Government?" "To abolish God!" said Gregory, opening the eyes of a fanatic. "We do not only want to upset a few despotisms and police regulations; that sort of anarchism does exist, but it is a mere branch of the Nonconformists. We dig deeper and we blow you higher. We wish to deny all those arbitrary distinctions of vice and virtue, honour and treachery, upon which mere rebels base themselves. The silly sentimentalists of the French Revolution talked of the Rights of Man! We hate Rights and we hate Wrongs. We have abolished Right and Wrong." "And Right and Left," said Syme with a simple eagerness. "I hope you will abolish them too. They are much more troublesome to me. ↗

— G.K. Chesterton

#anarchism #moral #right-and-wrong #anarchism

He's a clever little thing, isn't he?" She leaned in to drop a kiss on the kitten's soft head, reaching to move him off Griffin's chest. He reached for her hand, stopping her. "And what about me?" he asked, his eyes burning into hers. "What about you?" "Am I not clever enough for a kiss?" His voice was gruff. She favored him with a shy smile. "You're more than clever enough, Griffin Channing. ↗

— Michelle Zink

#griffin #griffin-and-helen #griffin-channing #helen #helen-cartwright

But now what? Why, now comes my master, takes me right away from my work, and my friends, and all I like, and grinds me down into the very dirt! And why? Because, he says, I forgot who I was; he says, to teach me that I am only a nigger! After all, and last of all, he comes between me and my wife, and says I shall give her up, and live with another woman. And all this your laws give him power to do, in spite of God or man. Mr. Wilson, look at it! There isn't one of all these things, that have broken the hearts of my mother and my sister, and my wife and myself, but your laws allow, and give every man power to do, in Kentucky, and none can say to him nay! Do you call these the laws of my country? Sir, I haven't any country, anymore than I have any father. But I'm going to have one. I don't want anything of your country, except to be let alone,--to go peaceably out of it; and when I get to Canada, where the laws will own me and protect me, that shall be my country, and its laws I will obey. But if any man tries to stop me, let him take care, for I am desperate. I'll fight for my liberty to the last breath I breathe. You say your fathers did it; if it was right for them, it is right for me! ↗

— Harriet Beecher Stowe

#human-rights #racism #slavery #social-justice #slavery

The fact that man knows right from wrong proves his intellectual superiority to the other creatures; but the fact that he can do wrong proves his moral inferiority to any creatures that cannot. ↗

— Mark Twain

#man #recovery #right #wisdom #wrong

You have to do stuff that average people don't understand because those are the only good things. ↗

— Andy Warhol

#individuality #originality #warhol #individuality

Sometimes it isn't easy to be sane, smart, and responsible. Sometimes it sucks. Sucks wang. Camel wang. But that doesn't turn wrong into right or stupid into smart. ↗

— Jim Butcher

#responsibility #right-and-wrong #ethics

The only valid censorship of ideas is the right of people not to listen. ↗

— Tommy Smothers

#ideas #listen #only #people #right