Yquotes.com

 

If your morals make you dreary, depend upon it they are wrong. I do not say "give them up," for they may be all you have; but conceal them like a vice, lest they should spoil the lives of better and simpler people.
--
Ch. XII, A Christmas Sermon.

 

Robert Louis Stevenson

» Robert Louis Stevenson - all quotes »

Similar quotes

 

I live in Scotland, have you been to Scotland? [a few of the audience whoop and cheer] See that's the exact same number of people, as answered that question in the affirmative when I asked it in England... and erm, people... English people, don't go up there, it's nearly half the country, and you say "Why don't you go?" and they go "Ahh, well, you know, it's very dark and dreary"... 'cos they get so used to the crocodiles and the tropical storms down there in England. "Dark and dreary, you can't understand the accents, the food's disgusting, and a lot of violence, a lot of drugs, people injecting temazepam into each other's stumps... other wise I'd go, you know?"

 

Dylan Moran

 

"I'm no historian," said Harry. "But morals are morals. What's unethical here and now is unethical anywhere, anytime."
"Kane, you're wrong. It is ethical to execute a man for theft?"
"Of course."
"Did you know that there was once a vastly detailed science of rehabilitation for criminals? It was a branch of psychology, naturally, but it was by far the largest such branch. By the middle of century twenty-one, nearly two-thirds of all criminals could eventually be released as cured."
"That's silly. Why go to all that trouble when the organ banks must have been crying for — Oh. I see. No organ banks."

 

Larry Niven

 

If you are talking to me about your new car, you are the first person, I am the second person, and the car is the third person.
These pronouns actually represent three perspectives that human beings can take when they talk about the world or attempt to know the world... The fascinating part is that these three perspectives might actually give rise to art, morals, and science. Or the Beautiful, the Good, and the True: the Beauty that is in the eye (or the "I") of the beholder; the Good or moral actions that can exist between you and me as a "we"; and the objective Truth about third-person objects (or "its") that you and I might discover: hence, art ("I"), morals ("we"), and science ("it").

 

Ken Wilber

 

{The church] is in its major part an opponent still of progress and improvement in all the ways that diminish suffering in the world, because it has chosen to label as morality a certain narrow set of rules of conduct which have nothing to do with human happiness; and when you say that this or that ought to be done because it would make for human happiness, they think that has nothing to do with the matter at all. "What has human happiness to do with morals? The object of morals is not to make people happy."

 

Bertrand Russell

 

"If you want to get the best people to run for office, we’ve got to make the rules easier, and simpler, and more understandable to get on the ballot."

 

Michael Bloomberg