Immoral Quotes - Page 16

• No activity that society thinks immoral is victimless. Knowledge that an activity is taking place is a harm to those who find it profoundly immoral.

  Robert Bork

  Thinking, Harm, Activity

  Robert H. Bork (2009). “The Tempting of America”, p.123, Simon and Schuster

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• I think segregation is bad, I think it's wrong, it's immoral. I'd fight against it with every breath in my body, but you don't need to sit next to a white person to learn how to read and write. The NAACP needs to say that.

  Clarence Thomas

  Writing, Fighting, Thinking

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• Anyone who clings to the historically untrue-and thoroughly immoral-doctrine that, 'violence never settles anything' I would advise to conjure the ghosts of Napoleon Bonaparte and the Duke of Wellington and let them debate it. The ghost of Hitler could referee, and the jury might well be the Dodo, the Great Auk and the Passenger Pigeon. Violence, naked force, has settled more issues in history than has any other factor, and the contrary opinion is wishful thinking at its worst. Breeds that forget this basic truth have always paid for it with their lives and freedom.

  Robert A. Heinlein

  Thinking, Issues, Never Settle

  Robert A. Heinlein (1987). “Starship Troopers”, p.27, Penguin

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• If a man's aspirations towards a righteous life are serious.. .if he earnestly and sincerely seeks a righteous life, his first act of abstinence is from animal food, because, not to mention the excitement of the passions produced by such food, it is plainly immoral, as it requires an act contrary to moral feeling, i. e., killing - and is called forth only by greed.

  Leo Tolstoy

  Passion, Men, Animal

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• The people who, during the election, were so wise, so moral, so perfect, now have no tendencies whatever; or if they have any, they are tendencies that lead downward to degradation. . . . If people are as incapable, as immoral, and as ignorant as the politicians indicate, then why is the right of these same people to vote defended with such passionate insistence?

  Frederic Bastiat

  Wise, Perfect, People

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• Ten to 20 years out, driving your car will be viewed as equivalently immoral as smoking cigarettes around other people is today.

  Marc Andreessen

  Years, People, Car

  "Bubble? What Bubble?"by Andrew Goldman, www.nytimes.com. July 07, 2011.

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• This blacklisting is going to collapse because it is rotten, immoral and illegal. I am one day going to be working openly in the motion picture industry. When that day comes, I swear to you that I will never sign a term contract with any major studio. I will, proudly and by preference, do at least one picture a year for King Brothers, and I will try to make it the best picture that I have it in me to do

  Dalton Trumbo

  Brother, Kings, Years

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• The devastation wreaked by landmines is not only horrendous but immoral

  Desmond Tutu

  Devastation, Landmines

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• There's no greater tragedy than an equal intensity, in the same soul or the same man, of the intellectual sentiment and the moral sentiment. For a man to be utterly and absolutely moral, he has to be a bit stupid. For a man to be absolutely intellectual, he has to be a bit immoral.

  Fernando Pessoa

  Stupid, Men, Soul

  Fernando Pessoa, Richard Zenith (2002). “The Selected Prose of Fernando Pessoa”, p.302, Grove Press

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• The English public takes no interest in a work of art until it is told that the work in question is immoral.

  Oscar Wilde

  Art, Insulting, England

  Oscar Wilde (2016). “Miscellanies”, p.135, Oscar Wilde

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• There is a violence that liberates, and a violence that enslaves; there is a violence that is moral and a violence that is immoral.

  Benito Mussolini

  Violence, Moral

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• For democrats, it's as crucial to defend secular culture as to preserve secular law. And in fact the two projects are inseparable: When religion defines morality, the wall between church and state comes to be seen as immoral.

  Ellen Willis

  Wall, Law, Two

  "Freedom from Religion". "The Nation", February 19, 2001.

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• There is no virtue in curiosity. In fact, it might be the most immoral desire a man can possess.

  Yukio Mishima

  Men, Curiosity, Desire

  Yukio Mishima (1958). “Confessions of a Mask”, p.222, New Directions Publishing

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• There is not a more perilous or immoral habit of mind than the sanctifying of success.

  Lord Acton

  Political, Mind, Politics

  Lord Acton (1961). “Lectures on Modern History”

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• It's all very well for us to sit here in the west with our high incomes and cushy lives, and say it's immoral to violate the sovereignty of another state. But if the effect of that is to bring people in that country economic and political freedom, to raise their standard of living, to increase their life expectancy, then don't rule it out.

  Niall Ferguson

  Country, People, Political

  "Niall Ferguson: 'Westerners don't understand how vulnerable freedom is" by William Skidelsky, www.theguardian.com. February 19, 2011.

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• According to our Christian ethics, we're supposed to love God, love each other and help take care of the poor. It is immoral to charge somebody making $5,000 an income tax.

  Bob Riley

  Christian, Income, Care

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• In the emerging world of ethnic conflict and civilizational clash, Western belief in the universality of Western culture suffers three problems: it is false; it is immoral; and it is dangerous.

  Samuel P. Huntington

  Suffering, Culture, World

  Samuel P. Huntington (1997). “The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order”, p.310, Penguin Books India

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• The necessary consequence of man's right to life is his right to self-defense. In a civilized society, force may be used only in retaliation and only against those who initiate its use. All the reasons which make the initiation of physical force an evil, make the retaliatory use of physical force a moral imperative. If some "pacifist" society renounced the retaliatory use of force, it would be left helplessly at the mercy of the first thug who decided to be immoral. Such a society would achieve the opposite of its intention: instead of abolishing evil, it would encourage and reward it.

  Ayn Rand

  Thug, Men, Self

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• Because the Illinois death penalty system is arbitrary and capricious - and therefore immoral - I no longer shall tinker with the machinery of death.

  George Ryan

  Illinois, Arbitrary, Death Penalty

  "Illinois Death Row Emptied". www.washingtonpost.com. January 12, 2003.

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• Homosexuality involves sexual acts most men consider not only immoral, but filthy. The reason public men rarely say aloud what most say privately is they are fearful of being branded 'bigots' by an intolerant liberal orthodoxy that holds, against all evidence and experience, that homosexuality is a normal, healthy lifestyle.

  Pat Buchanan

  Men, Healthy, Orthodoxy

  "Tell MSNBC that Pat Buchanan Is a Bigot" by Menachem Rosensaft, www.huffingtonpost.com. June 4, 2010.

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• The creed of sacrifice is a morality for the immoral.

  Ayn Rand

  Sacrifice, Morality, Creeds

  Ayn Rand (1999). “Ayn Rand Reader”, p.93, Penguin

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• And violence is impractical, because the old eye for an eye philosophy ends up leaving everybody blind .. It is immoral because it is a descending spiral ending in destruction for everybody. Means and ends are inseparable. The means represent the ideal in the making; in the long run of history destructive means cannot bring about constructive ends.

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Running, Philosophy, War

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• American GIs don't fight this unjust immoral and illegal war of Johnson's.

  Hanoi Hannah

  War, Fighting, Unjust

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• While the US Constitution marks these programs as illegal, my government argues that secret court rulings, which the world is not permitted to see, somehow legitimize an illegal affair. These rulings simply corrupt the most basic notion of justice - that it must be seen to be done. The immoral cannot be made moral through the use of secret law.

  Edward Snowden

  Government, Law, Nsa

  Edward Snowden's Statement to human rights groups at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport, wikileaks.org. July 12, 2013.

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• With me it was that defending the Communist Party was something worse than naming the names. I did not want to remain a martyr to something that I absolutely believed was immoral and wrong. It's as simple as that.

  Edward Dmytryk

  Party, Simple, Names

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