moral coercion Quotes

I'm for moral blackmail when it comes to putting away child molesters.

Men must be either the slaves of duty, or the slaves of force.

It is indeed probable that more harm and misery have been caused by men determined to use coercion to stamp out a moral evil than by men intent on doing evil.

I don't like the kind of writer who's out to change the world and beat up on people for their own good. Stalin did that and Hitler did that, and to hell with them.

With the laborers of England generally, does not the moral coercion of want subject their will as despotically to that of their employer, as the physical constraint does the soldier, the seaman, or the slave?

Alas, 'tis force alone that can compel to virtuous actions a degenerate people.

All participants in politics want to impose as much of their morality on others as possible.

the most elementary experience of life proves that the effects of compulsion last exactly as long as the physical or moral club can be applied.

But as the clerical pretensions are more exacting than all others, being put forward with an assertion that no answer is possible without breach of duty and sin, so are they more galling.

You get no moral credit for forcing other people to do what you think is right.

EXHORT, v.t. In religious affairs, to put the conscience of another upon the spit and roast it to a nut-brown discomfort.

You should not take a fellow eight years old and make him swear to never kiss the girls.

The man who coerces another not to eat fish commits more violence than he who eats it.

Here is the trap you are in.... And it's not my trap—I haven't trapped you. Because abortions are illegal, women who need and want them have no choice in the matter, and you—because you know how to perform them—have no choice, either. What has been violated here is your freedom of choice, and every woman's freedom of choice, too. If abortion was legal, a woman would have a choice—and so would you. You could feel free not to do it because someone else would. But the way it is, you're trapped. Women are trapped. Women are victims, and so are you.

There is a tendency to think that if we engage too directly with moral questions in politics, that's a recipe for disagreement, and for that matter, a recipe for intolerance and coercion.

Whenever "A" attempts by law to impose his moral standards upon "B," "A" is most likely a scoundrel.

Any time someone makes you feel guilty about how you are living, that is part of the old system (pre-Christ).

It's emotional blackmail to say if you're a good businesswoman and a musician, you're betraying your music.

If religious belief be indeed so necessary to mankind, as we are continually assured that it is, there is great reason to lament, that the intellectual grounds of it should require to be backed by moral bribery or subornation of the understanding.

guilt politics ... I regard as conveniently paralyzing, ripe for backlash defensiveness, counterproductive, and boring.

If liberty of speech is to be untrammeled from the grosser forms of constraint, the uniformity of opinion will be secured by a moral terrorism to which the respectability of society will give its thorough approval.