“Naturally you expect the moral thing from me. But I’ve learned something, friend. Morals don’t count for a hell of a lot in this galaxy. I rank them somewhere between straight teeth and the ability to carry a tune.”

“Roper: This was not practical; this was moral!
More: Oh, now I understand you, Will. Morality's not practical. Morality's a gesture. A complicated gesture learned from books.”

“Morality has got nothing to do with the politicians. Simply, because the straight line is considered by them as the longest distance between the two points.”

“I’ve had a lot of success; I’ve had failures, so I learn from the failure.”

“Arguments can always be answered. Moral philosophy, unlike straight moralizing, arises from and trives on plurality of values.”

“Fourth is the argument from moral praise and blame:
# According to Dr. Rosenberg, if naturalism is true then I am not morally praiseworthy or blameworthy for any of my actions because, as I said, on his view objective moral values and duties do not exist.
# But, I am morally praiseworthy and blameworthy for at least some of my actions. If you think that you have ever done something truly wrong or truly good then you should conclude:
# Therefore, naturalism is not true.”

“According to what I’ve been able to find out so far, there must have been something like fifty thousand. Mind you, too many. Even if the action was morally justified. I’m not trying to minimize things; I’m trying to bring them back to reality—there’s quite a dif­ference between fifty thousand and three million.”

“There is a radical dualism between the empirical nature of man and its moral nature.”

“One might call habit a moral friction: something that prevents the mind from gliding over things but connects it with them and makes it hard for it to free itself from them.”

“I don’t know why I think this, but maybe I’ve got my best work ahead. Maybe I’ll be putting my teeth in the glass, and maybe it will be a very different kind of role, but I want to do something where I’m not driving a car or a truck, where it’s real. Something that people wouldn’t expect me to do. Probably a man in search of himself. But we’re always searching for ourselves anyway.”