Ethics and Morality

A nihilist is a man who does not bow down before any authority, who does not take any principle on faith, whatever reverence thatprinciple may be enshrined in.

Not until I went into the churches of Americaand heard her pulpits flame with righteousness did I understand the secret of her genius andpower. America is great because America is good, and if America ever ceases to be good America will cease to be great.

In America there are no nobles or literarymen, and the people is apt to mistrust thewealthy; lawyers consequently form the highest political class, and the most cultivated circle ofsociety. They have therefore nothing to gain by innovation, which adds a conservative interest to their natural taste for public order. If I were asked where I place the American aristocracy, I should reply without hesitation, that it is notcomposed of the rich, who are united together by no common tie, but that it occupies the judicial bench and the bar.

[ Reply to Ralph Waldo Emerson’s questioning whyThoreau had gone to jail in 1843 for not paying the Massachusetts poll tax as a protest against slavery :] Why are you not here also?

The fate of the country . . . does not dependon what kind of paper you drop into the ballot box once a year, but on what kind of man you drop from your chamber into the street every morning.

When I meet a government which says to me, “Your money or your life,” why should I be in haste to give it my money?

I do not hesitate to say, that those who call themselves Abolitionists should at onceeffectually withdraw their support, both in person and property, from the government of Massachusetts, and not wait until theyconstitute a majority of one, before they sufferthe right to prevail through them. I think thatit is enough if they have God on their side, without waiting for that other one. Moreover, any man more right than his neighborsconstitutes a majority of one already.

The mass of men serve the state thus, notas men mainly, but as machines, with their bodies. They are the standing army, and themilitia, jailers, constables, posse comitatus, etc.In most cases there is no free exercise whateverof the judgement or of the moral sense; butthey put themselves on a level with wood andearth and stones; and wooden men can perhapsbe manufactured that will serve the purposeas well.

If the injustice is part of the necessary friction of the machine of government, let it go, let itgo: perchance it will wear smooth,—certainly the machine will wear out. If the injusticehas a spring, or a pulley, or a rope, or acrank, exclusively for itself, then perhaps you may consider whether the remedy will notbe worse than the evil; but if it is of such anature that it requires you to be the agent ofinjustice to another, then, I say, break the law.Let your life be a counter-friction to stop themachine.

I think that we should be men first, andsubjects afterwards. It is not desirable tocultivate a respect for the law, so much as forthe right. The only obligation which I havea right to assume is to do at any time what Ithink right.

The TV business . . . is normally perceived assome kind of cruel and shallow money trenchthrough the heart of the journalism industry, along plastic hallway where thieves and pimpsrun free and good men die like dogs, for nogood reason.

Ingratitude is among them a capital Crime, . . . For they reason thus: that whoever makes ill Returns to his Benefactor, must needs be a common Enemy to the rest of Mankind, from whom he hath received no Obligation; andtherefore such a Man is not fit to live.

It is computed, that eleven Thousand Personshave, at several Times, suffered Death, ratherthan submit to break their Eggs at the smallerEnd. Many large Volumes have been publishedupon this Controversy: But the Books of the Big-Endians have been long forbidden, andthe whole Party rendered incapable by Law ofholding Employments.

It is a Maxim among these Lawyers, that whatever hath been done before, may legally be done again.

[ On lawyers :] I said there was a Society of Men among us, bred up from their Youth in theArt of proving by Words multiplied for thePurpose, that White is Black , and Black is White , according as they are paid. To this Society allthe rest of the People are Slaves.

If Heaven had looked upon riches to be avaluable thing, it would not have given them tosuch a scoundrel.

A. A violent order is disorder; and

Pornography is about dominance. Erotica is about mutuality.

I do want to get rich but I never want to do what there is to do to get rich.

I have taken great care not to deride, bewail, or execrate human actions, but to understand them.

The law is the survival of the fittest . . . . The law is not the survival of the “better” or the “stronger,” if we give to those words any thing like their ordinary meanings. It is the survival of those which are constitutionally fittest to thrive under the conditions in which they are placed; and very often that which, humanly speaking, is inferiority, causes the survival.

We speak of war gods, but not of mathematician gods, poet or painter gods, or inventor gods. Nobody has ever called me a god; I am at best a sage. We worship all the conquerors, but have only one Prince of Peace, who was horribly put to death, and if he lived in these islands, would have some difficulty in getting exempted from military service as a conscientious objector.

We all profess the deepest regard for liberty; but no sooner does anyone claim to exercise it than we declare with horror that we are in favor of liberty but not of licence, and demand indignantly whether true freedom can ever mean freedom to do wrong, to preach sedition and immorality, to utter blasphemy. Yet this is exactly what liberty does mean.

I have not wasted my life trifling with literary fools in taverns as [Samuel] Johnson did when he should have been shaking England with the thunder of his spirit.