ethics

"The fundamental act of criticism is a disinterested response to a work of literature in which all one's beliefs, engagements, commitments, prejudices, stampedings of pity and terror, are ordered to be…"

"I was badly bitten by the idea that I could have a place in the theatre... I harbored that idea for a little while. It would have been a great pleasure, but I soon dropped it because I got principle..…"

"I am not interested in power for power's sake, but I'm interested in power that is moral, that is right and that is good."

"It is never to be expected in a revolution that every man is to change his opinion at the same moment. There never yet was any truth or any principle so irresistibly obvious that all men believed it a…"

"he last revolution of Paris appears to have convinced almost every body of the fatal consequences of Democratical principles, which lead by a path of flowers into the Abyss of Hell."

"Yet in the first pages of Bentham it burst upon me with all the force of novelty. What thus impressed me was the chapter in which Bentham passed judgment on the common modes of reasoning in morals and…"

"I wanted to do a show about a character that was an innocent, and so I focused on a sea sponge because it's a funny animal, a strange one, I thought he was a funny, nerdy, squeaky-clean square."

"There are essential and inessential insanities. The latter are solar in character, the former are linked to the moon."

"We cannot simply rely on a program of pollution abatement in country A for this would impose costs on A with no offsetting benefits to the polluting country. The OECD’s Polluter-Pays-Principle is thus…"

"If we would succeed in works of the imagination, we must offer a mild morality in the midst of rigid manners; but where the manners are corrupt, we must consistently hold up to view an austere moralit…"

"The characteristic of Chaucer is intensity; of Spenser, remoteness; of Milton, elevation; of Shakespeare, every thing."

"Anarchism does not mean bloodshed; it does not mean robbery, arson, etc. These monstrosities are, on the contrary, the characteristic features of capitalism. Anarchism, or Socialism, means the re-orga…"

"What is meant by "ethics" in this initial context of reflection cannot be anything too complicated or strongly committed to particular ethical theories, but rather quite a basic concept that could be …"

"I am convinced that the moment is coming when, with its message of eternal, universal values, it will come to the aid of our society. For in these words: "Thou shalt not kill; Thou shalt love thy neig…"

"North American banks and capitalists soon controlled the commercial exploitation of sugar and, furthermore, a good share of the industrial output of the land. In this way, a monopolistic control was e…"

"Every post is honorable in which a man can serve his country."

"I must have told my story ill if to every physician who hears me its illustrations have not the invigorating force of moral tonics."

"The law commands that the other person shall treat me as a rational being. He does not do so; and the law now absolves mc from all obligation to treat him as a rational being. But by that very absolvi…"

"Make a virtue of necessity."

"Morality is either a social contract or you have to pay cash."