Morality is the best of all devices for leading mankind by the nose. – Friedrich Nietzsche, The Antichrist
Morality is a private and costly luxury. – Henry B. Adams, The Education of Henry Adams
Without doubt half the ethical rules they din into our ears are designed to keep us at work. – Llewelyn Powys
Do not do an immoral thing for moral reasons. – Thomas Hardy, Jude the Obscure, 1875
The laws of conscience, which we pretend to be derived from nature, proceed from custom. – Michel de Montaigne, translated
Our morality seems to be only a check on the ultimate domination of force, just as our politeness is a check on the impulse of every pig to put his feet in the trough. – Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
What we call “morals” is simply blind obedience to words of command. – Havelock Ellis
The world of empirical morality consists for the most part of nothing but ill will and envy. – Goethe
There is no moral precept that does not have something inconvenient about it. – Denis Diderot
The Seven Deadly Sins are a litany of victimless crimes, compiled to distract attention from the bloody felonies of the righteous. – Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com
It is with flowers, as with moral qualities: the bright-coloured are sometimes poisonous; but, I believe, never the sweet-smelling. – Augustus William Hare and Julius Charles Hare, Guesses at Truth, by Two Brothers
Why should moral distinction be made between death by the spirochete and death by the streptococcus? – Martin H. Fischer (1879–1962) [Spirochete because of its association with
