#morality

Inasmuch as often in this life greater rewards are offered for vice than for virtue, few people would prefer the right to the useful, were they restreined neither by the fear of God nor the expectation of another life ... ↗

— René Descartes

#god #morality #vice #virtue #life

In una parola, ero troppo codardo per fare quello che sapevo essere giusto, così come ero stato troppo codardo per evitare di fare quello che sapevo sbagliato. A quel tempo, non avevo avuto nessuna esperienza del mondo e non imitavo nessuno dei suoi molti abitanti che agiscono in questo modo. Genio assolutamente naturale, scoprii questa linea di condotta tutto da solo. ↗

— Charles Dickens

#growth #italiano #life #morality #pip

We must remember that possession of physical beauty can easily weaken the moral faculty. ↗

— Frank Tallis

#morality #vanity #weakness #beauty

If I am disobeying orders, I'd rather be with God against men than with men against God. ↗

— Aristides de Souza Mendes do Amaral e Abranches

#men

The evil of technology was not technology itself, Lindbergh came to see after the war, not in airplanes or the myriad contrivances of modern technical igenuity, but in the extent to which they can distance us from our better moral nature, or sense of personal accountability. ↗

— David McCullough

#morality #technology #nature

Saying that you are moral because you believe in a god is like saying you are an economist because you play monopoly. ↗

— Robert W. Cox

#economics #god #monopoly #morality #religion

By religion, then, I understand a propitiation or conciliation of powers superior to man which are believed to direct and control the course of nature and of human life. Thus defined, religion consists of two elements, a theoretical and a practical, namely, a belief in powers higher than man and an attempt to propitiate or please them. Of the two, belief clearly comes first, since we must believe in the existence of a divine being before we can attempt to please him. But unless the belief leads to a corresponding practice, it is not a religion but merely a theology; in the language of St. James, “faith, if it hath not works, is dead, being alone.” In other words, no man is religious who does not govern his conduct in some measure by the fear or love of God. On the other hand, mere practice, divested of all religious belief, is also not religion. Two men may behave in exactly the same way, and yet one of them may be religious and the other not. If the one acts from the love or fear of God, he is religious; if the other acts from the love or fear of man, he is moral or immoral according as his behaviour comports or conflicts with the general good. ↗

— James George Frazer

#god #hate #love #morality #religion

The hard core of morality and even of religion seems to me to be just what makes good comedy possible...Where there is no norm, nothing can be ridiculous, except for a brief moment of unbalanced provincialism in which we may laugh at the merely unfamiliar. Unless there is something about which the author is never ironical, there can be no true irony in the work. ↗

— C.S. Lewis

#humor #irony #morality #principles #writing

Jesus was not content to derive his ethics from the scriptures of his upbringing. He explicitly departed from them. [...] Since a principal thesis of this chapter is that we do not, and should not, derive our morals from scripture, Jesus has to be honoured as a model for that very thesis. ↗

— Richard Dawkins

#jesus #morality #scripture #scripture

A good act does not wash out the bad, nor a bad act the good. Each should have its own reward. ↗

— George R.R. Martin

#justice #morality #redemption #crime