#oral

Imperfection is the doorway for which perfection may step through...perfection must be enforced, it must be soldered into the eyes of the blind, it must be severed methodically and sewn into the very warmth that keeps at bay the cold of the night. Imperfection is the fire that sets alight the dark passage through which perfection wanders...and we must embrace it all, we must have purpose to survive. ↗

— Dave Matthes

#death #dread #forgiveness #goal #greed

While the restraining force of a higher authority was denounced in school, and the moral basis for decrying crime as immoral was discarded, moral relativism also demolished the ethical foundations of the very laws that criminals were breaking. If there is no Creator that imparts rights, an individual has no rights at birth. The only rights a person may have are determined by majority opinion. ↗

— Dan Greenup

#death

Gates got up, but not fast or jerkily, with the same slowness that had always characterized him. He wiped the sweat off his palms by running them lightly down his sides. As though he were going to shake hands with somebody. He was. He was going to shake hands with death. He wasn't particularly frightened. Not that he was particularly brave. It was just that he didn't have very much imagination. Rationalizing, he knew that he wasn't going to be alive anymore ten minutes from now. Yet he wasn't used to casting his imagination ten minutes ahead of him, he'd always kept it by him in the present. He couldn't visualize it. So he wasn't as unnerved by it as the average man would have been. ("3 Kills For 1") ↗

— Cornell Woolrich

#death #death-penalty #death-sentence #electric-chair #execution

Liberty medals...Are they trying to bribe me with coloured ribbons? I wouldn't kill a man for one of those things. Or go and be killed. Any shooting I do is to save my own life, and not for a ribbon and a hunk of bronze. [says Mäkelä] ↗

— Väinö Linna

#killing #morality #war #life

Morality negates life. ↗

— Friedrich Nietzsche

#life

The first right on earth is the right of the ego. Man's first duty is to himself. His moral law is never to place his prime goal within the persons of others. His moral obligation is to do what he wishes, provided his wish does not depend primarily upon other men. ↗

— Ayn Rand

#men

All nationalists have the power of not seeing resemblances between similar sets of facts. A British Tory will defend self-determination in Europe and oppose it in India with no feeling of inconsistency. Actions are held to be good or bad, not on their own merits, but according to who does them, and there is almost no kind of outrage — torture, the use of hostages, forced labour, mass deportations, imprisonment without trial, forgery, assassination, the bombing of civilians — which does not change its moral colour when it is committed by 'our' side . . . The nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, but he has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them ↗

— George Orwell

#nationalism #politics #change

Sustainable change, after all, depends not upon compliance with external mandates or blind adherence to regulation, but rather upon the pursuit of the greater good. ↗

— Douglas B. Reeves

#good #lead #leadership #mandate #morality

Let us with Caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. ↗

— George Washington

#religion #religion

Too many people get credit for being good, when they are only being passive. They are too often praised for being broadminded when they are so broadminded they can never make up their minds about anything. ↗

— Fulton J. Sheen

#christianity #ethics #morality #philosophy #spirituality