#oral

There’s no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren’t enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for me to live without breaking laws. Who wants a nation of law-abiding citizens? What’s there in that for anyone? But just pass the kind of laws that can neither be observed or enforced nor objectively interpreted - and you create a nation of law-breakers - and then you cash in on guilt. ↗

— Ayn Rand

#guilt #injustice #innocence #innocent #justice

Being female in this world means having been robbed of the potential for human choice by men who love to hate us. One does does not make choices in freedom. Instead, one conforms in body type and behavior and values to become an object of male sexual desire, which requires an abandonment of a wide-ranging capacity for choice... Men too make choices. When will they choose not to despise us? ↗

— Andrea Dworkin

#feminism #freedom #men #morality #objectification

You’re like a god from a Greek myth, Saiman. You have no empathy. You have no concept of the world beyond your ego. Wanting something gives you an automatic right to obtain it by whatever means necessary with no regard to the damage it may do. I would be careful if I were you. Friends and objects of deities’ desires dropped like flies. In the end the gods always ended up miserable and alone." — Kate Daniels ↗

— Ilona Andrews

#ego #empathy #friendship #gods #greek-mythology

First people lose their hair, then their vices, then their motivation. Then a toupee brings it all flowing back. ↗

— Bauvard

#hair #humor #morale #morals #funny

Conventionality is not morality. Self-righteousness is not religion. To attack the first is not to assail the last. ↗

— Charlotte Brontë

#life #morality #religion #life

When it is recalled that until the Christian era the underworld was never regardded as a hostile area, that all gods were useful and essentially friendly to man despite occasional lapsesl when we see the steady methodical inculcation into humanity of the idea of man's worthlesseness - until redeemed - the necessity of the Devil may become evident as a weapon, a weapon designed and used time and time again in every age to whip men into a surrender to a particular church or church state. ↗

— Arthur Miller

#christianity #hell #morality #religion #age

Death is not an event in life: we do not live to experience death. If we take eternity to mean not infinite temporal duration but timelessness, then eternal life belongs to those who live in the present. ↗

— Ludwig Wittgenstein

#death #duration #eternal #eternal life #eternity

Courage becomes a worthwhile and meaningful virtue when it is regarded not so much as a willingness to die manfully but as a determination to live decently. ↗

— Thomas S. Monson

#integrity #morality #courage

Here is your country. Cherish these natural wonders, cherish the natural resources, cherish the history and romance as a sacred heritage, for your children and your children's children. Do not let selfish men or greedy interests skin your country of its beauty, its riches or its romance. ↗

— Theodore Roosevelt

#environment #morals #nationalism #patriotism #politics

Art was the very antithesis of crass moralism. ↗

— Alain de Botton

#moralism #art