#morality

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

It ought to be an offense to be excruciating and unfunny in circumstances where your audience is almost morally obliged to enthuse. ↗

— Christopher Hitchens

#death #humour #morality #death

Wilson had been killed by everybody. It was this that made his death special, the children had been told. It was justice, it was all the people showing how much they hated this crime. Killing was justice when everybody joined in. ↗

— Barry Unsworth

#community #justice #punishment #death

Equality is not the empirical claim that all groups of humans are interchangeable; it is the moral principle that individuals should not be judged or constrained by the average properties of their group. ↗

— Steven Pinker

#equality #morality #psychology #equality

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

Before I can say I am, I was. Heraclitus and I, prophets of flux, know that the flux is composed of parts that imitate and repeat each other. Am or was, I am cumulative, too. I am everything I ever was, whatever you and Leah may think. I am much of what my parents and especially my grandparents were -- inherited stature, coloring, brains, bones (that part unfortunate), plus transmitted prejudices, culture, scruples, likings, moralities, and moral errors that I defend as if they were personal and not familial. ↗

— Wallace Stegner

#family #heritage #identity #morality #past

A man can live and be healthy without killing animals for food; therefore, if he eats meat, he participates in taking animal life merely for the sake of his appetite. And to act so is immoral. ↗

— Leo Tolstoy

#morality #vegetarianism #food

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

— Noël Coward

#buildings #cities #london #morality #skyscrapers

Never let the sacrifice of others be for nothing by doing nothing. ↗

— L.M. Fields

#morality #patriotic #freedom