#moral

You ask 'Are you a man or a demon?' Neither, I say. I have woken up, and the rest of you are sleeping, and that is the only difference between us. ↗

— Aravind Adiga

#family #morality #death

Thus did I receive, through the singing of these various hymns and the moral education that accompanied them, not only a religious, but a political schooling of sorts. For though the intertwining of morality and politics does not necessarily make for a clear understanding of the cynicism that governs world affairs., it does engender impatience with and a rejection of this cynicism, and a real belief in a more perfect, less unjust world. And though I regret not having been taught more about the real world, I have never regretted being taught this kind of morality first. ↗

— Jean Said Makdisi

#morality #education

Man must cease attributing his problems to his environment, and learn again to exercise his will - his personal responsibility in the realm of faith and morals. ↗

— Albert Schweitzer

#cease #environment #exercise #faith #his

There is a core difference between sharing the gospel with the lost and imposing a specific moral standard on the unconverted. ↗

— Rosaria Champagne Butterfield

#lost #moral-standard #unconverted #faith

Nothing in Chomsky's account acknowledges the difference between intending to kill a child, because of the effect you hope to produce on its parents (we call this "terrorism"), and inadvertently killing a child in an attempt to capture or kill an avowed child murderer (we call this "collateral damage"). In both cases a child has died, and in both cases it is a tragedy. But the ethical status of the perpetrators, be they individuals or states, could not be more distinct... For Chomsky, intentions do not seem to matter. Body count is all. ↗

— Sam Harris

#collateral-damage #moral-equivalence #noam-chomsky #faith

Maybe you have to know the darkness before you can appreciate the light. ↗

— Madeleine L'Engle

#family

The Christians are right: it is Pride which has been the chief cause of misery in every nation and every family since the world began. ↗

— C.S. Lewis

#christianity #morality #family

I'm beginning to wonder," said Kent, sitting down now on an overturned wooden tub. "Who do I serve? Why am I here?" You are here, because, in the expanding ethical ambiguity of our situation, you are steadfast in your righteousness. It is to you, our banished friend, that we all turn—a light amid the dark dealings of family and politics. You are the moral backbone on which the rest of us hang our bloody bits. Without you we are merely wiggly masses of desire writhing in our own devious bile." Really?" asked the old knight. Aye," said I. I'm not sure I want to keep company with you lot, then. ↗

— Christopher Moore

#fool #kent #morality #family

I don't know what London's coming to — the higher the buildings the lower the morals. ↗

— Noël Coward

#buildings #cities #london #morality #skyscrapers

This was another of our fears: that Life wouldn't turn out to be like Literature. Look at our parents--were they the stuff of Literature? At best, they might aspire to the condition of onlookers and bystanders, part of a social backdrop against which real, true, important things could happen. Like what? The things Literature was about: Love, sex, morality, friendship, happiness, suffering, betrayal, adultery, good and evil, heroes and villains, guilt and innocence, ambition, power, justice, revolution, war, fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, the individual against society, success and failure, murder, suicide, death, God. ↗

— Julian Barnes

#fiction #god #life #literature #love