Ethics and Morality

Is that which is holy loved by the gods because it is holy, or is it holy because it is loved by the gods?

Saints should always be judged guilty until they are proved innocent.

Political language … is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.

In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defence of the indefensible.

Power is not a means, it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship.

At the base of all these aristocratic races the predator is not to be mistaken, the splendorous blond beast, avidly rampant for plunder and victory.

He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster.

Morality is the herd-instinct in the individual.

I teach you the superman. Man is something to be surpassed.

We can believe what we choose. We are answerable for what we choose to believe.

If I am obliged to bring religion into after-dinner toasts (which indeed does not seem quite the thing) I shall drink—to the Pope, if you please—still, to Conscience first, and to the Pope afterwards.

It is almost a definition of a gentleman to say that he is one who never inflicts pain.

This hath not offended the king.

Anyone who campaigns for public office becomes disqualified for holding any office at all.

Your sheep, that were wont to be so meek and tame, and so small eaters, now, as I hear say, be become so great devourers, and so wild, that they eat up and swallow down the very men themselves.

If the triangles were to make a God they would give him three sides.

One should eat to live, and not live to eat.

What I have spoken, is the language of that which is not called amiss The good old Cause.

Be nice to people on your way up because you’ll meet ’em on your way down.

If we think to regulate printing, thereby to rectify manners, we must regulate all recreations and pastimes, all that is delightful to man.

As good almost kill a man as kill a good book: who kills a man kills a reasonable creature, God’s image; but he who destroys a good book, kills reason itself, kills the image of God, as it were in the eye.

Licence they mean when they cry liberty;

… Yet I shall temper so

Evil, be thou my good.