#morality

If it is not tempered by compassion, and empathy, reason can lead men and women into a moral void. (95) ↗

— Karen Armstrong

#compassion #empathy #immorality #morality #reason

One ought always to lie, when one can do good by it; ↗

— Mark Twain

#lie #morality #art

I tell Allah I love Him immensely, immensely. But I tell Him I cannot be better, because of how the world is. ↗

— Katherine Boo

#morality #beauty

Is it a small thing to quench the flames of hell with the holy tears of pity -- to unbind the martyr from the stake -- break all the chains -- put out the fires of civil war -- stay the sword of the fanatic, and tear the bloody hands of the Church from the white throat of Science? Is it a small thing to make men truly free -- to destroy the dogmas of ignorance, prejudice and power -- the poisoned fables of superstition, and drive from the beautiful face of the earth the fiend of fear? ↗

— Robert G. Ingersoll

#freedom #goodness #kindness #liberty #morality

Men, some to business take, some to pleasure take; but every woman is at heart a rake ↗

— Alexander Pope

#morality #women #business

If laws were real they wouldn’t need to be enforced, because if they were real they couldn’t be broken. Try breaking the law of gravity. Now that’s a law. Laws made by man are rules reflecting the current status of his moral codes. As he alters and whittles away his morality, casting bits and pieces aside, his codes change to reflect it. ↗

— Boyd Rice

#morality #change

Past and future are the same, and we cannot change either, only know them more fully. My journey to the past had changed nothing, but what I had learned had changed everything, and I understood that it could not have been otherwise. If our lives are tales that Allah tells, then we are the audience as well as the players, and it is by living these tales that we receive their lessons. ↗

— Ted Chiang

#islam #morality #time-travel #change

These studies are the result of my attempt to extract the essence of literature. Literature is either the essential or nothing. I believe that the Evil—an acute form of Evil—which it expresses, has a sovereign value for us. But this concept does not exclude morality: on the contrary, it demands a 'hypermorality.' Literature is communication. Communication requires loyalty. A rigorous morality results from complicity in the knowledge of Evil, which is the basis of intense communication. —Literature and Evil ↗

— Georges Bataille

#evil #literature #morality #communication

What responsibility are you avoiding... He wasn't avoiding responsibility... Though there was one thing he clung to. An excuse, perhaps, like the dead emperor. It was the soul of the wretch. Apathy. The belief that nothing was his fault, the belief that he couldn't change anything. If a man was cursed, or if he believed he didn't have to care, then he didn't need to hurt when he failed. Those failures couldn't have been prevented. Someone or something else had ordained them. ↗

— Brandon Sanderson

#morality #change

Wanted, a man who will not lose his individuality in a crowd, a man who has the courage of his convictions, who is not afraid to say "No," though all the world say "Yes. ↗

— Orison Swett Marden

#morality #courage