“Do not be too moral. You may cheat yourself out of much life so. Aim above morality. Be not simply good, be good for something.”

Last update June 3, 2021. History

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Henry David Thoreau 385
1817-1862 American poet, essayist, naturalist, and abolitio… 1817–1862

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“But that too isn’t the way because non-cooperation with evil is as much a moral obligation as is cooperation with good.”

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Context: Another way is to acquiesce and to give in, to resign yourself to the oppression. Some people do that. They discover the difficulties of the wilderness moving into the promised land, and they would rather go back to the despots of Egypt because it’s difficult to get in the promised land. And so they resign themselves to the fate of oppression; they somehow acquiesce to this thing. But that too isn’t the way because non-cooperation with evil is as much a moral obligation as is cooperation with good.

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“The important thing is moral choice. Evil has to exist along with good, in order that moral choice may operate. Life is sustained by the grinding opposition of moral entities.”

Variant: The important thing is moral choice. Evil has to exist along with good, in order that moral choice may operate. Life is sustained by the grinding opposition of moral entities.
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“To be in good moral condition requires at least as much training as to be in good physical condition.”

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Context: To be in good moral condition requires at least as much training as to be in good physical condition. But that certainly does not mean asceticism or self-mortification. Nor do I appreciate in the least the idealization of the "simple peasant life." I have almost a horror of it, and instead of submitting to it myself I want to drag out even the peasantry from it, not to urbanization, but to the spread of urban cultural facilities to rural areas.

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“The moral of human life is never simple, and the moral of a story which aims only at being true to human life cannot be expected to be any more so.”

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“I think the old, sound, and honest maxim that "you shall not do evil that good may come," is applicable in law as well as in morals.”

Sir Alexander Cockburn, 12th Baronet (1802–1880) Lord Chief Justice

Reg. v. Hicklin and another (1868), 11 Cox, C. C. 27; S. C. 3 L. R. Q. B. 372; reported in Dictionary of Legal Quotations (1904) by James William Norton-Kyshe, p. 92.

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“Evil men may not always do these things, but they seek to destroy goodness, virtue, morality, decency, truth and honor”

Fulton J. Sheen (1895–1979) Catholic bishop and television presenter

"Bishop Sheen Writes...Communism and Tragedy," The Toledo Blade, Sunday, July 26, 1959, sec. 2, p. 5. https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%22communists%20believe%20in%20the%20devil%22%20site:news.google.com/newspapers&source=newspapers&gws_rd=ssl#hl=en&q=%22Bishop+Sheen+Writes...+Communism+And+Tragedy%22+
Context: No one can understand Communism who does not believe in the devil. The Communists believe in the devil. The Communists organized a so-called "patriotic" church. A few brain washed were to be in charge of the churches because they were loyal to the anti-God regime.
One of the first orders given by the Communists to them was that the prayer to Prayer to Saint Michael be no longer said because it invoked the protection of St. Michael against "the wickedness and snares of the devil." As one Communist judge said: "We are those devils."
It is hard for many in the free world to believe that there are not only bad men, but evil men. Bad men steal, rape, ravage and plunder. Evil men may not always do these things, but they seek to destroy goodness, virtue, morality, decency, truth and honor. Bad men who steal admit honesty; evil men who do not steal, call dishonesty "honesty," totalitarianism "democracy," slavery "freedom." Evil men can be nice at table, polite with women, courteous in Washington, refined in London and calm in Geneva.
But the principle which guides their every move is the maxim of Lenin: every lie, trickery, knavery and deceit must be used to.

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