Ethics and Morality

He that complies against his will,

Doubtless the pleasure is as great

It is necessary only for the good man to do nothing for evil to triumph.

Of this stamp is the cant of Not men, but measures; a sort of charm by which many people get loose from every honourable engagement.

When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall, one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.

Society is indeed a contract … it becomes a partnership not only between those who are living, but between those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are to be born.

Superstition is the religion of feeble minds.

Kings will be tyrants from policy when subjects are rebels from principle.

This barbarous philosophy, which is the offspring of cold hearts and muddy understandings.

Government is a contrivance of human wisdom to provide for human wants.

Every human benefit, every virtue and every prudent act, is founded on compromise.

It is not, what a lawyer tells me I may do; but what humanity, reason, and justice, tells me I ought to do.

To tax and to please, no more than to love and to be wise, is not given to men.

It is a general popular error to imagine the loudest complainers for the public to be the most anxious for its welfare.

There is, however, a limit at which forbearance ceases to be a virtue.

Liberty too must be limited in order to be possessed.

A man that could look no way but downwards, with a muckrake in his hand.

Then I saw that there was a way to Hell, even from the gates of heaven.

Hanging is too good for him, said Mr Cruelty.

That low man seeks a little thing to do,

Conventionality is not morality. Self-righteousness is not religion. To attack the first is not to assail the last. To pluck the mask from the face of the Pharisee, is not to lift an impious hand to the Crown of Thorns.

What is robbing a bank compared with founding a bank?

For Mercy has a human heart,

Then cherish pity, lest you drive an angel from your door.