Moral Trade-off Quotes

We sin because we see sin as a bargain. We unconsciously calculate that it’s worth it, that it pays.

Evils have their comfort, good none can support.

Whatever the heart desires, it purchases at the cost of soul

In vain will you fly from one vice if in your wilfulness you embrace another.

All the money you made will never buy back your soul.

Commerce is against morality. Morality is going to lose every time.

The devil loves 'curing' a small fault by giving you a great one.

It was better that a little blood should be shed that much blood should be saved. The blood that was shed was bad blood; the blood that was saved was good blood.

When you actually meet the devil and he offers you a deal most artists eventually negotiate.

What has a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?

The only thing that permits us to acquiesce in an erroneous theory is the lack of a better one, analogously, an injustice is tolerable only when it is necessary to avoid an even greater injustice.

Fame is a bit Nietzschean. For everything good, something bad happens to you, so you have to sort of be careful.

so long as it promises to exclude some greater possible evils.

Society never advances. It recedes as fast on one side as it gains on the other. It undergoes continual changes: it is barbarous, it is civilized, it is rich, it is scientific; but this change is not amelioration. For every thing that is given, something else is taken. Society acquires new arts and loses old instincts.

There are worse things than a lie... I have found... that it may be well to choose one sin in order that another may be shunned.

Our virtues live upon our incomes; our vices consume our capital.

This vice brings in one hundred million francs in taxes every year. I will certainly forbid it at once - as soon as you can name a virtue that brings in as much revenue.

The declaration of rights [Bill of Rights] is, like all other human blessings, alloyed with some inconveniences and not accomplishing fully its object. But the good in this instance vastly outweighs the evil.

Every great example of punishment has in it some injustice, but the suffering individual is compensated by the public good.

An injustice is tolerable only when it is necessary to avoid an even greater injustice.

Suppose you could gain everything in the whole world, and lost your soul. Was it worth it?

You ever go to shop for tuna, and it says "dolphin safe", and you look at it and kind of go, "Yeah, but"-like somehow you think it's not going to be as good? Like, "I want to do the right thing-but it's probably kind of bland without the dolphin."

Virtue knows to a farthing what it has lost by not having been vice.

It's better to be good than evil, but one achieves goodness at a terrific cost.