Scruples Quotes - Page 2

• The rat had no morals, no conscience, no scruples, no consideration, no decency, no milk of rodent kindness, no compunctions, no higher feeling, no friendliness, no anything

  E. B. White

  Kindness, Feelings, Rodents

  E. B. White (2011). “In the Words of E.B. White: Quotations from America's Most Companionable of Writers”, p.170, Cornell University Press

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• A man of business will often deceive you without the slightest scruple, but he will absolutely refuse to commit a theft.

  Arthur Schopenhauer

  Business, Men, Deceiving

  Arthur Schopenhauer (2015). “The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer - Studies in Pessimism (illustrated)”, p.47, Full Moon Publications

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• Our selfishness is so robust and many-clutching that, well encouraged, it easily devours all sustenance away from our poor little scruples.

  George Eliot

  Selfishness, Littles, Poor

  George Eliot (1866). “Felix Holt: The Radical”, p.176

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• Every age and every nation has certain characteristic vices, which prevail almost universally, which scarcely any person scruples to avow, and which even rigid moralists but faintly censure. Succeeding generations change the fashion of their morals with the fashion of their hats and their coaches; take some other kind of wickedness under their patronage, and wonder at the depravity of their ancestors.

  Thomas B. Macaulay

  Fashion, Age, Generations

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• I have a different idea of elegance. I don't dress like a fop, it's true, but my moral grooming is impeccable. I never appear in public with a soiled conscience, a tarnished honor, threadbare scruples, or an insult that I haven't washed away. I'm always immaculately clean, adorned with independence and frankness. I may not cut a stylish figure, but I hold my soul erect. I wear my deeds as ribbons, my wit is sharper then the finest mustache, and when I walk among men I make truths ring like spurs.

  Edmond Rostand

  Cutting, Men, Ideas

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• The sadistic narcissist perceives himself as Godlike, ruthless and devoid of scruples, capricious and unfathomable, emotion-less and non-sexual, omniscient, omnipotent and omni-present, a plague, a devastation, an inescapable verdict.

  Sam Vaknin

  Devastation, Emotion, Narcissist

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• Millions of Americans cannot tell you who lived at Mount Vernon or who wrote the Declaration of Independence - let alone the Emancipation Proclamation. But they know that to be a Benedict Arnold is to be a traitor of the deepest dye - someone who coldly betrays not only a sacred cause but every moral scruple along the way.

  Arthur L. Herman

  Independence, Sacred, Way

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• What restrains us from killing is partly fear of punishment, partly moral scruple, and partly what may be described as a sense of humor

  H. L. Mencken

  Punishment, May, Morality

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• The greatest threat to mankind comes from the renunciation of individual scruple in favor of institutional denominators. . . . Real heroism lies, as it always will, not in conformity or even patriotism, but in acts of solitary moral courage. Which, come to think of it, is what we used to admire in our Christian savior

  John le Carre

  Christian, Real, Lying

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• A Mormon is a man that has the bad taste and the religion to do what a good many other people are restrained from doing by conscientious scruples and the police.

  Finley Peter Dunne

  Men, People, Police

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• Of a truth, Knowledge is power, but it is a power reined by scruple, having a conscience of what must be and what may be. . . .

  George Eliot

  Truth, May, Knowledge Is Power

  George Eliot (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of George Eliot (Illustrated)”, p.2985, Delphi Classics

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• I remember my emotions the day we watched Nelson Mandela walk out of prison Writing & literature in South Africa during the anti-apartheid years, became a 'cultural weapon.' You had to use it to fight apartheid & some of us resisted that in the end, you recognize that you are facing a government that has no scruples about using culture & art to oppress you.

  Achmat Dangor

  Art, Writing, Fighting

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• In my judgment it is the duty of Congress, while respecting to the uttermost the conscientious convictions and religious scruples of every citizen, to prohibit within its jurisdiction all criminal practices ... Nor can any ecclesiastical organization be safely permitted to usurp in the smallest degree the functions and powers of the National Government.

  James A. Garfield

  Religious, Government, Organization

  "Inaugural Speeches from the Presidents of the United States".

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• I do not scruple to employ mendacity and a fictitious appearance of female incompetence when the occasion demands it.

  Barbara Mertz

  Female, Demand, Appearance

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• It may be asserted without scruple, that no otherclass of dependants have had their character so entirely distorted from its natural proportions by their relations with their masters.

  Bill Vaughan

  Character, Class, May

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• Thrift is care and scruple in the spending of one's means. It is not a virtue and it requires neither skill nor talent.

  Immanuel Kant

  Mean, Skills, Care

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• Piety sometimes gives birth to scruples, and faith to superstition, when they are not directed by wisdom and knowledge.

  Lord Acton

  Giving, Superstitions, Birth

  John Emerich Edward Dalberg, Lord Acton (2016). “The History of Freedom (and other Essays)”, p.296, Jazzybee Verlag

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• We spoil ourselves with scruples long as things go well.

  Aeschylus

  Long, Wells, Spoil

  Aeschylus (1984). “The Oresteia: Agamemnon; The Libation Bearers; The Eumenides”, p.127, Penguin

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• However contradictory the coroner's report — whether he pronounces Consumption or Loneliness or Suicide to be the cause of death — isn't it plain how the true artist-seer actually dies? I say that the true artist-seer, the heavenly fool who can and does produce beauty, is mainly dazzled to death by his own scruples, the blinding shapes and colors of his own sacred human conscience.

  J. D. Salinger

  Suicide, Loneliness, Artist

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• I had always been scrupulously careful to avoid the smallest suggestion of infant indoctrination, which I think is ultimately responsible for much of the evil in the world. Others, less close to her, showed no such scruples, which upset me, as I very much wanted her, as I want all children, to make up her own mind freely when she became old enough to do so. I would encourage her to think, without telling her what to think.

  Richard Dawkins

  Children, Thinking, Evil

  Richard Dawkins (2004). “A Devil's Chaplain”, p.241, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• It was at first communicated to you that the Government, by order of the Jemiet had decided to destroy completely all the Armenians living in Turkey...An end must be put to their existence, however criminal the measures taken may be, and no regard must be paid to either age or sex nor to conscientious scruples.

  Talaat Pasha

  Sex, Taken, Order

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• I wonder whether I should gain anything by the attempt to assume a character which is not mine. My wavering manner, born of doubt and scruple, has at least the advantage of rendering all the different shades of my thought, and of being sincere. If it were to become terse, affirmative, resolute, would it not be a mere imitation?

  Henri Frederic Amiel

  Character, Doubt, Shade

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• I know them, yea,
  And what they weigh, even to the utmost scruple;
  Scambling, out-facing, fashion-mong'ring boys,
  That lie, and cog, and flout, deprave, and slander,
  Go antickly, and show outward hideousness,
  And speak off half a dozen dangerous words,
  How they might hurt their enemies, if they durst;
  And this is all.

  William Shakespeare

  Fashion, Hurt, Lying

  William Shakespeare, John Payne Collier (1858). “Much ado about nothing. Love's labour's lost. Midsummer night's dream. Merchant of Venice. As you like it. Taming of the shrew. All's well that ends well. Twelfth night”, p.71

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• Success achieved by the most contemptible means cannot but destroy the soul. ... It helps to cover up the inner corruption and gradually dulls one's scruples, so that those who begin with some high ambition cannot, even if they would, create anything out of themselves.

  Emma Goldman

  Success, Ambition, Mean

  Alphonso Lingis, Emma Goldman (1996). “Red Emma Speaks: An Emma Goldman Reader”, Humanities Press International

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• One could plausibly argue that it is for quite sound reasons that the whole capacity for sexual ecstasy is inaccessible to most people - given that sexuality is something, like nuclear energy, which may prove amenable to domestication through scruple, but then again may not.

  Susan Sontag

  People, May, Energy

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