John Patrick Shanley Quotes

He [William Gladstone] made his conscience not his guide but his accomplice.

In the end, we would like not to be guilty while at the same time being dispensed of the effort of purifying ourselves. Not enough cynicism and not enough virtue.

When a man declares: "There are no blacks and whites [in morality]" he is making a psychological confession, and what he means is: "I am unwilling to be wholly good - and please don't regard me as wholly evil!"

People talk about the conscience, but it seems to me one must just bring it up to a certain point and leave it there. You can let your conscience alone if you're nice to the second housemaid.

When the sun comes up, I have morals again.

And sometimes you have to go above the written law, I believe.

If I see something that's morally ambiguous or ambiguously beautiful or has some pull in some way, I won't censor myself; I always run towards the light.

A statesman cannot afford to be a moralist.

... sufficient conscience to bother him, but not sufficient to keep him straight.

I am unwilling to be wholly good—and please don't regard me as wholly evil!

a person is never entirely holy or entirely sinful.

There are few things wholly evil or wholly good. Almost everything, especially of government policy, is an inseparable compound of the two, so that our best judgment of the preponderance between them is continually demanded.

No one is entirely good or evil; that is what the Warrior thinks when he has a new opponent.

The most reckless sinner against his own conscience has always in the background the consolation that he will go on in this course only this time, or only so long, but that at such a time he will amend. We may be assured that we do not stand clear with our own consciences so long as we determine or project, or even hold it possible, at some future time to alter our course of action.

I was good and bad, but never wicked.

Life's not black-and-white. Sometimes the ends justifies the means.

There is not always a good guy. Nor is there always a bad one. Most people are somewhere in between.

Justification is a remarkable thing-takes all those solid lines and blurs them, so that honor becomes as supple as a willow, and ethics burst like soap bubbles.

There is even the dignity of vice.

Obama said he went to Libya because of his conscience. Did anyone ever wrestle with his conscience and lose?

The line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?

Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either - but right through every human heart...

There are many who have grave scruples about deceiving but think it as nothing to deceive themselves.

That's what's terrible about wars when whole societies adopt an impulse of objectification. Everything becomes black and white.

I've been a sinner and a saint. If you've been a saint all your life, it's pretty easy to sleep at night. If you've been a sinner, you're just as comfortable in it. I've walked both sides of the fence, and there are times I can't sleep and I wake the engineer up and get it out of me. But it usually doesn't pour all the way out. I have to come back and have the conversation that you usually try not to have with yourself. That's how it gets resolved.