Black and White Morality/Quotes

There are a million names of damnation! A million more temptations away from the straight narrow path of righteousness!

—Pope Martin IV

Soon there will be war. Millions will burn. Millions will perish in sickness and misery. Why does one death matter against so many? Because there is good and there is evil, and evil must be punished. Even in the face of Armageddon I shall not compromise in this. But there are so many deserving of retribution ... and there is so little time.

—Rorschach, Watchmen

I have no empty heroes. My goodies are good, and my baddies are bad. There are no schizophrenic goodies or sympathetic baddies. And children like it that way; it's not confusing. And they want the goodies to defeat the bads.

—Brian Jacques

Morality is not properly the doctrine of how we may make ourselves happy, but how we may make ourselves worthy of happiness.

—Immanuel Kant, Critique of Practical Reason

Two players. Two sides. One is light. One is dark.

—John Locke, Lost, discussing...backgammon?

Sisko: "Sometimes life seems so complicated, nothing is truly good or truly evil. Everything seems to be a shade of grey. And then you spend some time with a man like Dukat, and you realize that there is such a thing as truly evil."
Dax:"To realize that is one thing. To do something about it is another. So what are you going to do?"

Sisko:"I'll tell you what I'm not going to do, I'm not going to let him destroy Bajor. I fear no evil. From now on, it's him or me."

—Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Sisko and Dax, "Waltz"

I always find it's easier the see the world in black and white. Grey? I don't know what to do with grey.

—Garrus Vakarian, Mass Effect 2, after reconsidering killing a traitor.

Because every conflict has a right side.

—The Nostalgia Chick, She Ra

There are precious few at ease
With moral ambiguities

So we act as though they don't exist

—The Wonderful Wizard Of OZ, Wicked

There's no greys, only white that's got grubby.

—Granny Weatherwax, Carpe Jugulum

It was one of those great stories that you can't put down at night
The hero knew what he had to do, and he wasn't afraid to fight.
The villain goes to jail while the hero goes free.
I wish it were that simple for me.
And the reason that she loved him was the reason I loved him too.

He never wondered what was right or wrong. He just knew.

—David Crosby, "Hero"

Among the Alps and Pyrenees, perhaps, there were no mixed characters. There, such as were not as spotless as an angel might have the dispositions of a fiend.

—Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey

"What we are looking at is good and evil, right and wrong."

—George Bush, speech made at Pearl Harbor, October 28th, 1990