“They understood the basic principles of morals: that nothing is moral always, and anything is moral under the right circumstances.”
"The Persistence of Vision", The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction (March 1978), reprinted as the title story in The Persistence of Vision (1978)
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John Varley 23
American science fiction author 1947Related quotes
Speech in the House of Commons (5 April 1830) https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1830/apr/05/the-jews#column_1313 in favour of Robert Grant's Jewish Disabilities Bill
1830s
“Moral issues are always terribly complex for someone without principles.”
Misattributed
“Nothing, that is morally wrong, can be politically right.”
No citation to Gladstone found. Hannah More https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hannah_More in 1837 in Hints Towards Forming the Character of a Young Princess https://books.google.com/books?id=lv5JAAAAcAAJ&pg=PA179&lpg=PA179&dq=%E2%80%9CNothing+that+is+morally+wrong+can+be+politically+right.%E2%80%9D&source=bl&ots=ne_BjY9onV&sig=8RyZJKi_o7AvvR3N9WcQUU5Q0TI&hl=en&sa=X&ei=84mhVIufIoahyASOrYCoAw&ved=0CEMQ6AEwBw#v=onepage&q=%E2%80%9CNothing%20that%20is%20morally%20wrong%20can%20be%20politically%20right.%E2%80%9D&f=false, The Works of Hannah More, Vol. 4, said the following on p. 179: "On the Whole, we need not hesitate to assert, that in the long course of events, nothing, that is morally wrong, can be politically right. Nothing, that is inequitable, can be finally successful."
Misattributed
“Nations are nothing but morals: If their morals disappear, they disappear.”
https://www.aldiwan.net/poem7890.html
Original: (sd) وَإِنَّمَا الْأُمَمُ الْأَخْلَاقُ مَا بَقِيَتْ / فَإِنْ هُمُ ذَهَبَتْ أَخْلَاقُهُمْ ذَهَبُوا
“Anything that is moral for a group to do is moral for one person to do.”
There must be a flaw in that, since I’ve always been taught that it is wrong to take the law in your own hands. But I can’t find the flaw and it sounds axiomatic, self-evident. Switch it around. If something is wrong for one person to do, can it possibly be made right by having a lot of people (a government) agree to do it together? Even unanimously?
If anything is wrong, it is wrong—and vox populi can’t change it.
Source: Podkayne of Mars (1963), Chapter 13 (p. 169)
Source: 1960s - 1970s, Guest editorial: Wicked problems (1967), p. 142 cited in: Rob Hundman (2010) Weerbarstig veranderen. p. 38
“There can be no compromise on moral principles.”
Source: The Virtue of Selfishness: A New Concept of Egoism
“A moral system valid for all is basically immoral.”
Generally attributed to Nietzsche, this is a quotation from Curtis Cate's Friedrich Nietzsche: A Biography (2003) and is the author's interpretation of Nietzsche's Aphorism 221 (Beyond Good and Evil)
Misattributed