Keith ` > Keith's Quotes

“...Next time you're faced with a choice, do the right thing. It hurts everyone less in the long run.”
― Wendelin Van Draanen, Flipped

“Right is right even if no one is doing it; wrong is wrong even if everyone is doing it.”
― Saint Augustine

“Wrong does not cease to be wrong because the majority share in it.”
― Leo Tolstoy, A Confession

“When I was a little girl, everything in the world fell into either of these two categories: wrong or right. Black or white. Now that I am an adult, I have put childish things aside and now I know that some things fall into wrong and some things fall into right. Some things are categorized as black and some things are categorized as white. But most things in the world aren't either! Most things in the world aren't black, aren't white, aren't wrong, aren't right, but most of everything is just different. And now I know that there's nothing wrong with different, and that we can let things be different, we don't have to try and make them black or white, we can just let them be grey. And when I was a child, I thought that God was the God who only saw black and white. Now that I am no longer a child, I can see, that God is the God who can see the black and the white and the grey, too, and He dances on the grey! Grey is okay.”
― C. JoyBell C.

“If you are afraid of being lonely, don't try to be right.”
― Jules Renard

“In a country that doesn't discriminate between fame and infamy, the latter presents itself as plainly more achievable.”
― Lionel Shriver, We Need to Talk About Kevin

“What you need to learn, children, is the difference between right and wrong in every area of life. And once you learn the difference, you must always choose the right.”
― Jeanne DuPrau, The City of Ember

“In the simple moral maxim the Marine Corps teaches

— do the right thing, for the right reason

— no exception exists that says: unless there's criticism or risk. Damn the consequences.”
― Josh Rushing, Mission Al-Jazeera: Build a Bridge, Seek the Truth, Change the World

“An open mind, in questions that are not ultimate, is useful. But an open mind about the ultimate foundations either of Theoretical or of Practical Reason is idiocy. If a man's mind is open on these things, let his mouth at least be shut. He can say nothing to the purpose. Outside the Tao there is no ground for criticizing either the Tao or anything else.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man

“Imagine you come upon a house painted brown. What color would you say the house was?"
"Why brown, of course."
"But what if I came upon it from the other side, and found it to be white?"
"That would be absurd. Who would paint a house two colors?"
He ignored my question. "You say it's brown, and I say it's white. Who's right?"
"We're both right."
"Non," he said. "We're both wrong. The house isn't brown or white. It's both. You and I only see one side. But that doesn't mean the other side doesn't exist. To not see the whole is to not see the truth.”
― Megan Chance, The Spiritualist

“I suppose there's no good answer to that, Danny. I wish there was. But if you take the wrong, path, something deep inside you will feel twisted. There are times when that will be the only way to know the right from the wrong.”
― Inara Scott, The Candidates

“True law, the code of justice, the essence of our sensations of right and wrong, is the conscience of society. It has taken thousands of years to develop, and it is the greatest, the most distinguishing quality which has developed with mankind ... If we can touch God at all, where do we touch him save in the conscience? And what is the conscience of any man save his little fragment of the conscience of all men in all time?”
― Walter Van Tilburg Clark, The Ox-Bow Incident

“It's easy to say you will do what's right and shun what's wrong, but when you get close enough to any given situation, you realize that there is no black or white. There are gradations of gray.”
― Jodi Picoult, The Storyteller

“Well, you have said that you were quite certain I was not a serious anarchist. Does this place strike you as being serious?"
"It does seem to have a moral under all its gaiety," assented Syme; "but may I ask you two questions? You need not fear to give me information, because, as you remember, you very wisely extorted from me a promise not to tell the police, a promise I shall certainly keep. So it is in mere curiosity that I make my queries. First of all, what is it really all about? What is it you object to? you want to abolish Government?"
"To abolish God!" said Gregory, opening the eyes of a fanatic. "We do not only want to upset a few despotisms and police regulations; that sort of anarchism does exist, but it is a mere branch of the Nonconformists. We dig deeper and we blow you higher. We wish to deny all those arbitrary distinctions of vice and virtue, honour and treachery, upon which mere rebels base themselves. The silly sentimentalists of the French Revolution talked of the Rights of Man! We hate Rights and we hate Wrongs. We have abolished Right and Wrong."
"And Right and Left," said Syme with a simple eagerness. "I hope you will abolish them too. They are much more troublesome to me.”
― G.K. Chesterton, The Man Who Was Thursday: A Nightmare

“We can know what we do wrong even before we do it, but self-knowledge can't affect or change the outcome, can it? Everyone singing his own little song, convinced it's the most wonderful song the world has ever heard. Don't you see? We create our own thorns, and never stop to count the cost. All we can do is suffer the pain, and tell ourselves it was well worth it.”
― Colleen McCullough, The Thorn Birds

“All decisions we’ve come to accept as right or wrong are ingrained in us from the society in which we abide. Rights and wrongs are not universally known or transferable.”
― John-Talmage Mathis, For the (soon) unemployed: You Against Them