Morality Quotes

If there is something to pardon in everything, there is also something to condemn.

The Christian resolution to find the world ugly and bad has made the world ugly and bad.

The desire to annoy no one, to harm no one, can equally well be the sign of a just as of an anxious disposition.

If you are too weak to give yourselves your own law, then a tyrant shall lay his yoke upon you and say: "Obey! Clench your teeth and obey!" And all good and evil shall be drowned in obedience to him.

And if your friend does evil to you, say to him, ''I forgive you for what you did to me, but how can I forgive you for what you did to yourself?"

One can also be undignified and flattering toward a virtue.

In morality, man treats himself not as individuum but as dividuum.

It is nobler to declare oneself wrong than to insist on being right-especially when one is right.

A moral system valid for all is basically immoral.

Every high degree of power always involves a corresponding degree of freedom from good and evil.

It is a self-deception of philosophers and moralists to imagine that they escape decadence by opposing it. That is beyond their will; and, however little they acknowledge it, one later discovers that they were among the most powerful promoters of decadence.

One must repay good and ill; but why just to the person who did us good or ill?

Morality is the best of all devices for leading mankind by the nose.

Moral contempt is a far greater indignity and insult than any kind of crime.

All preachers of morality, as also all theologians have a bad habit in common: all of them try to persuade man that he is very ill, and that a severe, final, radical cure is necessary.

Morality is neither rational nor absolute nor natural. World has known many moral systems, each of which advances claims universality; all moral systems are therefore particular, serving a specific purpose for their propagators or creators, and enforcing a certain regime that disciplines human beings for social life by narrowing our perspectives and limiting our horizons.

Whatever harm the evil may do, the harm done by the good is the most harmful harm.

In every ascetic morality man worships a part of himself as God and for that he needs to diabolize the other part.

A person must have a good memory to keep the promises he has made. A person must have a strong imagination to be able to have pity. So closely is morality tied to the quality of the intellect.

Socrates.- If all goes well, the time will come when one will take up the memorabilia of Socrates rather than the Bible as a guide to morals and reason... Socrates excels the founder of Christianity in being able to be serious cheerfully and in possessing that wisdom full of roguishness that constitutes the finest state of the human soul. And he also possessed the finer intellect.