Every religion lies. Every moral precept is a delusion. Even the stars are a mirage. The truth is darkness, and the only thing that matters is making a statement before one enters it. Cutting the skin of the world and leaving a scar. That’s all history is, after all: scar tissue.
There is no such thing as moral phenomena, but only a moral interpretation of phenomena.[Es giebt gar keine moralischen Phänomene, sondern nur eine moralische Ausdeutung von Phänomenen…]
People need a moral code, to help them make decisions. All this bio-yogurt virtue and financial self-righteousness are just filling the gap in the market. But the problem is that it’s all backwards. It’s not that you do the right thing and hope it pays off; the morally right thing is by definition the thing that gives the biggest payoff.
A weird time in which we are alive. We can travel anywhere we want, even to other planets. And for what? To sit day after day, declining in morale and hope. Falling into an interminable ennui. And meanwhile, the others are busy. They are not sitting helplessly waiting.
The confusion of marriage with morality has done more to destroy the conscience of the human race than any other single error.
Only the descent into the hell of self-knowledge can pave the way to godliness.[Nur die Höllenfahrt des Selbsterkenntnisses bahnt den Weg zur Vergötterung.]
Morality, it could be argued, represents the way that people would like the world to work, wheareas economics represents how it actually does work.
All men are moral. Only their neighbors are not.
When law becomes despotic, morals are relaxed, and vice versa.[Quand le despotisme est dans les lois, la liberté se trouve dans les mœurs, et vice versa.]
What is morality? Judgment to distinguish right and wrong, vision to see the truth, courage to act upon it, dedication to that which is good, integrity to stand by the good at any price. But where does one find it?
We think about mortality so little, these days, except to flail hysterically at it with trendy forms of exercise and high-fiber cereals and nicotine patches.
We have in fact, two kinds of morality, side by side: one which we preach, but do not practice, and another which we practice, but seldom preach.
