“The difficulty was not that of following a moral principle at personal cost; the difficulty was that of knowing what to do when there is more than one principal, and when the principles clash.”
“He moved now, A tiny jerk of movement, and Elissa saw what she hadn t grasped before. that his fingers showed white and bloodless against he dark blue of his jacket, that his face was so tense that skin seemed to stretch taut over the bones beneath. Then he spoke, and she realized he wasn t calm. He was violently angry. WHY, Captain? he said, so much suppressed anger in his voice that it felt as if it would shatter something. I would have the the real question was WHY NOT?”
“He moved now, A tiny jerk of movement, and Elissa saw what she hadn t grasped before. that his fingers showed white and bloodless against he dark blue of his jacket, that his face was so tense that skin seemed to stretch taut over the bones beneath. Then he spoke, and she realized he wasn t calm. He was violently angry. WHY, Captain? he said, so much suppressed anger in his voice that it felt as if it would shatter something. I would have thought the the real question was WHY NOT?”
“If you can’t see the feelings in a donkey, a ship, or a delicate tool, then it’s just as easy to not see them in your brother or sister when you can profit by treating them badly.”
“I have always believed that a trademark is the life of an enterprise and that it must be protected boldly. A trademark and a company name are not just clever gimmicks-they carry responsibility and guarantee the quality of the product. If someone tries to get a free ride on the reputation and the ability of another who has worked to build up public trust, it is nothing short of thievery. We were not flattered by this theft of our name.”
“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 fighting against.”
“Courageous people do not fear forgiving, for the sake of peace.”
“Sol wanted to know how any ethical system – much less a religion so indomitable that it had survived every evil mankind could throw at it – could flow from a command from God for a man to slaughter his son. It did not matter to Sol that the command had been rescinded at the last moment. It did not matter that the command was a test of obedience. In fact, the idea that it was the obedience of Abraham which allowed him to become the father of all the tribes of Israel was precisely what drove Sol into fits of fury.”
“I think if you cheat in a ethics class then there s really no hope for you.”
“The widespread assumption that ethical behavior takes the fun out of life is false. In actuality, living ethically ensures that relationships in our lives, including encounters with strangers, nurture our spiritual growth.”
“There is always only one question in the ethics of truth: how will I, as some-one, continue to exceed my own being?”
“Narrative is an open-ended invitation to ethical and poetical responsiveness. Storytelling invites us to become not just agents of our own lives, but narrators and readers as well. It shows us that the untold life is not worth living. There will always be someone there to say, tell me a story , and someone there to respond. Were this not so, we would no longer be fully human.”
“Our treatment of animals, in every department, is deeply and systematically immoral. Becoming a vegetarian is only the most minimal ethical response to the magnitude of the evil.”
“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?”
“It is different with the upper classes. They, following science, want to base justice on reason alone, but not with Christ, as before, and they have already proclaimed that there is no crime, that there is no sin. And that s consistent, for if you have no God what is the meaning of crime?”
“Seek not that your sons and your daughters should not see visions, should not dream dreams; seek that they should see true visions, that they should dream noble dreams. Such out-going of the imagination is one with aspiration, and will do more to elevate above what is low and vile than all possible inculcations of morality.”
“The fact that no limits exist to the destructiveness of this weapon [the Super , i.e. the hydrogen bomb] makes its very existence and the knowledge of its construction a danger to humanity as a whole. It is necessarily an evil thing considered in any light. For these reasons, we believe it important for the President of the United States to tell the American public and the world what we think is wrong on fundamental ethical principles to initiate the development of such a weapon.”