#moral

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

He saw that science had become as great a hoax as religion, that nationalism was a farce, patriotism a fraud, education a form of leprosy, and that morals were for cannibals ↗

— Henry Miller

#morals #nationalism #religion #science #education

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

— Dorothy L. Sayers

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

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

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

The most important thing in life is to dare. The most complicated thing in life is to be afraid. The smartest thing in the world is to try to be a moral person. ↗

— Shimon Peres

#fear #life #morality #wisdom #life

Everything good in life is either immoral, illegal or fattening. ↗

— Nicole Richie

#illegal #immorality #lament #life #true

As long as human labor power, and, consequently, life itself, remain articles of sale and purchase, of exploitation and robbery, the principle of the “sacredness of human life” remains a shameful lie, uttered with the object of keeping the oppressed slaves in their chains. ↗

— Leon Trotsky

#morality #politics #violence #wage-labor #life

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