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Morals Quotes

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Morals Quotes

“But though I might fill the world with dragons I never had the slighest real doubt that heroes ought to fight with dragons. I must stop to challenge many child-lovers for cruelty to children. It is quite false to say that the child dislikes the fable because it is moral. Very often he likes the moral more than the fable. Adults are reading their own weary mockery into a mind still vigorous enough to be entirely serious.”

“Reality is that which exists; the unreal does not exist; the unreal is merely that negation of existence which is the content of a human consciousness when it attempts to abandon reason. Truth is the recognition of reality; reason, man’s only means of knowledge, is his only standard of truth.”

“Yes, this is an age of moral crisis. Yes, you are bearing punishment for your evil. But it is not man who is now on trial and it is not human nature that will take the blame. It is your moral code that’s through, this time. Your moral code has reached its climax, the blind alley at the end of its course. And if you wish to go on living, what you now need is not to return to morality—you who have never known any—but to discover it.”

“Man cannot survive except by gaining knowledge, and reason is his only means to gain it. Reason is the faculty that perceives, identifies and integrates the material provided by his senses. The task of his senses is to give him the evidence of existence, but the task of identifying it belongs to his reason, his senses tell him only that something is, but what it is must be learned by his mind.”

“Parlando di morale, Camus fa ridere quei cinici che, dopo aver letto Lenin, Trotskij e Stalin, primeggiavano per sofismi. Leon Trotskij, che ha creato l'Armata Rossa, che ha massacrato i marinai libertari di Kronstadt, scrive La loro morale e la nostra. Si tratta di un capolavoro per i dittatori di ieri, di oggi e di domani. Distinguendo tra morale borghese e morale rivoluzionaria impedisce di giudicare la rivoluzione con le categorie della morale borghese ed esige un giudizio secondo i criteri della morale rivoluzionaria. È così che fucilare, torturare, mandare al gulag sono azioni cattive per il borghese, ma per il rivoluzionario sono buone, perché, presentate come inezie dialettiche, pur nella loro negatività, sono chiamate a produrre il positivo avvento della rivoluzione proletaria, perlomeno per quei pochi che saranno sopravvissuti. La logica consequenziale e opportunista di questa morale rivoluzionaria priva di principi, stava bene tanto a Hitler, Lenin, Mussolini che a Stalin, Pétain, Trotskij, Franco e Mao, e stava bene persino a Sartre. Ma non è mai andata bene a Camus.”

“When a political opponent resorts to the racist card, it's a sure sign of moral bankruptcy: there's no decent argument left in the armoury.”

“The purpose of college, to put this all another way, is to turn adolescents into adults. You needn't go to school for that, but if you're going to be there anyway, then that's the most important thing to get accomplished. That is the true education: accept no substitutes. The idea that we should take the first four years of young adulthood and devote them to career preparation alone, neglecting every other part of life, is nothing short of an obscenity. If that's what people had you do, then you were robbed. And if you find yourself to be the same person at the end of college as you were at the beginning - the same beliefs, the same values, the same desires, the same goals for the same reasons - then you did it wrong. Go back and do it again.”

“The critics greeted this book with a churlish and horrified outcry. Certain virtuous people, in newspapers no less virtuous, made a grimace of disgust as they picked it up with the tongs to throw it into the fire. Even the minor literary reviews, the ones that retail nightly the tittle-tattle from alcoves and private rooms, held their noses and talked of filth and stench. I am not complaining about this reception; on the contrary I am delighted to observe that my colleagues have such maidenly susceptibilities.”

“individuals are concerned not with the moral issue of realizing these standards, but with the amoral issue of engineering a convincing impression that these standards are being realized. Our activity, then, is largely concerned with moral matters, but as performers we do not have a moral concern in these moral matters. As performers we are merchants of morality. Our day is given over to intimate contact with the goods we display and our minds are filled with intimate understandings of them; but it may well be that the more attention we give to these goods, th e more d is ta n t we feel from them and from those who are believing enough to buy them. To use a different imagery, the very obligation and profitablility of appearing always in a steady moral light, of being a socialized character, forces us to be the sort of person who is practiced in the ways of the stage.”

“Delarosa was trying to save the human race," said Mkele. "Her only crime was that she was willing to go too far in order to do it. We decided, briefly, that we didn't want to go along with her, but look at us: We're hiding in a basement, letting Delarosa fight our battles, seriously considering lettering her deploy a nuclear bomb. We are long past the point where we can pick and choose our morality. We either save our species or we don't." "Yes," said Tovar, "but I'd prefer it if we were still worth saving by the end of it.”

“Radia hakuwa na makosa. Wengi huishi maisha yao bure. Yeye aliishi ya kwake kwa ajili ya watu. Hakuishi tu kama raia wa Tunisia. Aliishi kama raia wa uanadamu, maadili mema na uchapakazi. Watu walimsifu kwa kuwa na kaulimbiu ya 'Acha dunia katika hali nzuri kuliko ulivyoikuta'.”

“Kila mtu ana tabia, matendo, mawazo na akili yake tofauti na mtu mwingine hapa duniani. Usimdharau mtu ukidhani ana akili kama za kwako au anafikiri kama unavyofikiri wewe kwani kila mtu aliumbwa kivyake na Mwenyezi Mungu. Unaweza kudhani unamjua mtu kumbe humjui. Heshimu kila mtu kama unavyojiheshimu kwa sababu, kila mtu ni wa pekee. Kama tunavyotofautiana katika vidole na macho ndivyo tunavyotofautiana katika tabia, matendo, mawazo, imani, maadili na akili. Usimdharau mtu usiyemjua au unayedhani unamjua.”

“The victims of PTSD often feel morally tainted by their experiences, unable to recover confidence in their own goodness, trapped in a sort of spiritual solitary confinement, looking back at the rest of the world from beyond the barrier of what happened. They find themselves unable to communicate their condition to those who remained at home, resenting civilians for their blind innocence. The Moral Injury, New York Times. Feb 17, 2015”

“People generally don’t suffer high rates of PTSD after natural disasters. Instead, people suffer from PTSD after moral atrocities. Soldiers who’ve endured the depraved world of combat experience their own symptoms. Trauma is an expulsive cataclysm of the soul. The Moral Injury, New York Times. Feb 17, 2015”

“Of one thing I am certain: No single people, tradition, religion, governmental form, ethical program, moral code, or civilization has had sufficient wisdom and goodness to set the pattern and govern he world in the was of peace, decency and mutual respect. I do not believe God ever intended it to be that way. He wants us to reach out and learn from the wisdom he has given to humanity over broad sweeps of time and place and personality.”

“Right and wrong are superstitions; your desires, however, are real. Those who cannot achieve their desires, or who despair of doing so, often compensate by constructing imaginary frameworks. For example, if you wish to live in a world in which no one exploits animals, it is moralism to judge those who eat meat immoral instead of setting about disabling the animal exploitation industry. People retreat into moralism as a sort of consolation prize, for it is easier to rule in the realm of good and evil, fictitious as it may be, than to come to terms with our limited leverage upon this world and yet persist in endeavoring to change it.”

“Power and influence: things that should be obtained not for means of greed, nor pride, nor ego, but rather to ensure that in the right moment, when your wisdom and benevolence are required to keep humanity strong and united, you can deliver and orchestrate others toward the greater good.”