For we each of us deserve everything, every luxury that was ever piled in the tombs of the dead kings, and we each of us deserve nothing, not a mouthful of bread in hunger. Have...

I consider the law prohibiting the sharing of copies with your friend the moral equivalent of Jim Crow. It does not deserve respect.

Those who think that modern times are wickeder than previous times are apt to identify the cause as the weakening of a sense of moral law, associated with the departure of religious traditions of morality...

How is it possible that suffering that is neither my own nor of my concern should immediately affect me as though it were my own, and with such force that is moves me to action?

Just take the weapon you hold in your hand and drive it through his heart,” Valentine’s voice was soft. “One simple motion. Nothing you haven’t done before.”Jace met his father’s stare with a level gaze....

Education without values, as useful as it is, seems rather to make man a more clever devil.

With nature on your side, you don’t need numbers, you don’t need financing and you certainly don’t need to make friends with people you should be fightingagainst.

Men would no longer be victims of nature or of their own largely irrational societies: reason would triumph; universal harmonious cooperation, true history, would at last begin. For if this was not so, do the...

We live in a system that espouses merit, equality, and a level playing field, but exalts those with wealth, power, and celebrity, however gained.

A man who wills commands something within himself that renders obedience, or that he believes renders obedience.

It is naively assumed that the fact that the majority of people share certain ideas and feelings proves the validity of these ideas and feelings. Nothing could be further from the truth. Consensual validation as...

In our tribunal, we look only at personal criminal responsibility in a very tightly defined, narrow way and we demand proof beyond a resonable doubt about the involvement of the individual. We do no have...

The House Ethics Committee doesn’t look at anything.

In modern times an idea can be refuted, yes, but not retracted

Do not injure, abuse, oppress, enslave, insult, torment, torture, or kill any creature or living being.

Science is opposed to theological dogmas because science is founded on fact. To me, the universe is simply a great machine which never came into being and never will end. The human being is no...

We cannot respect something just because millions or billions believe in it! We can respect something only if it is complying with the high intelligence and the ethics!

If faith is what you have to go on, if faith is the link between your beliefs and the world at large, your beliefs are very likely to be wrong. Beliefs can be right or...

if ethics is not the engine of success, in the train of growth, it sure is a guard, with a flag, which may be green, or at times red

In the New Testament, religion is grace and ethics is gratitude.

the miraculous” is the impossible. He knows that the witnesses were wholly incapable of examining the questions involved, that credulity had possession of their minds, that ‘the miraculous’ was expected, that it was their daily...

But for this book we could not know right from wrong.

Every aspect of Western culture needs a new code of ethics – a rational ethics – as a precondition of rebirth.

And what we say – that what He willeth is right and what He doth not not will is wrong, is not so to be understood, as if, should God will something inconsistent, it would...

Ethics are so annoying. I avoid them on principle.

Things taste better outdoors. And if it’s a forbidden thing, so much the better.

You still owe me a million dollars.” I’d presented him with a bill for proving his innocence and getting him freed from prison. He had yet to pay. Couldn’t imagine why.”Yeah, I was hoping we...

We’ve also evolved the ability to simply ‘pay it forward’: I help you, somebody else will help me. I remember hearing a parable when I was younger, about a father who lifts his young son...

The answer can’t be found in books – or be solved by bringing it to other people. Not unless you want to remain a child all your life. You’ve got to find the answer inside...

Knowing your limits, and that there is a limit to getting what you want, comes from a sense of self-respect instilled in you from an early age. It takes guts to stand up in the...

The function of education, therefore, is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically. But education which stops with efficiency may prove the greatest menace to society. The most dangerous criminal may be...

Everything good is good because of the love it contains.

Don’t just do what is required, do what is respected then, at you’ll know, you did the right thing even if it works out wrong.

The labours of men of genius, however erroneously directed, scarcely ever fail in ultimately turning to the solid advantage of mankind.

I suppose therefore that all things I see are illusions; I believe that nothing has ever existed of everything my lying memory tells me. I think I have no senses. I believe that body, shape,...

I am very proud of the fact that 20 years [sic] on people tell me they became a vegetarian as a result of ‘Meat is Murder’. I think that is quite literally rock music changing someone’s...

Whatever is my right as a man is also the right of another; and it becomes my duty to guarantee as well as to possess.

407Justice was like coloured balls in a magician’s hand, changing colour and shape all the time beneath the light of politics.

I am not well-versed in theory, but in my view, the cow deserves her life. As does the ram. As does the ladybug. As does the elephant. As do the fish, and the dog and...

If you must give me a label, then label me a human being. I have no pride in being a human, though, because I have nothing to do with my becoming one.But, whereas animals don’t...

Observe the difference between your attitude to illusions and mine. You have to defend the religious illusion with all your might. If it becomes discredited – and indeed the threat to it is great enough...

Think occasionally of the suffering of which you spare yourself the sight.

What you withhold in this life will be withheld from you in the next.

We have in fact, two kinds of morality, side by side: one which we preach, but do not practice, and another which we practice, but seldom preach.

The limitation of the ethical phenomenon to its place and time does not imply its rejection but, on the contrary, its validation. One does not use canons to shoot sparrows.

The Hedonistic Imperative outlines how genetic engineering and nanotechnology will abolish suffering in all sentient life. This project is ambitious but technically feasible. It is also instrumentally rational and ethically mandatory. The metabolic pathways of...

Day and NightThe night is long: do not shorten it by sleep. The day is fair: do not darken it with wrongdoing.

Only those with a conscience can find an action unconscionable.

if [God] doesn’t exist, man is the chief of the earth, of the universe. Magnificent! Only how is he going to be good without God?

Your life is a trajectory. Every choice you make alters that trajectory, in a positive or negative way. Will you categorize that dinner with friends as a business expense? Will you be honest with your...