If Rihanna stripped it all down morally rather than with her clothes, perhaps we’d get closer to Nina Simone. She’s talented, but all we want is to sing the truth. If Britney Spears was to sing closer to her heart, she might have been the new Bobby Gentry or Dolly Parton.
The more you talk about – and live by – your principles, the harder it will be for others to treat you in a morally ambiguous manner.
I think that technologies are morally neutral until we apply them. It’s only when we use them for good or for evil that they become good or evil.
The most disturbing thing, I think, with people that do very morally devious things more and more often is to see that they completely feel that they had no choice in the matter.
It’s very tricky to throw a morally flexible character onto the screen and have an audience empathize. It’s always an exercise in restraint.
Sir Hugh Greene is the man I hold most responsible for the state of our country today. For 11 years hardly a week went by without a sniping reference to me. And he gave access to anyone who was prepared to say anything morally subversive.
We don’t have sources who are dissidents on other sources. Should they come forward, that would be a tricky situation for us. But we’re presumably acting in such a way that people feel morally compelled to continue our mission, not to screw it up.
The peasant must always be helped technically, economically, morally and culturally. The guerrilla fighter will be a sort of guiding angel who has fallen into the zone, helping the poor always and bothering the rich as little as possible in the first phases of the war.
The very fact Boris Johnson is the favourite to succeed May says everything about how vacuous and morally bankrupt our politics has become.
There’s a common misconception about running for office. People think it’s dreadful, morally compromising work. But I’ve found the opposite is true. It made a better person and a better feminist. It forced me to take a hard look at my shortcomings.
Behaving morally because of a hope of reward or a fear of punishment is not morality. Morality is not bribery or threats. Religion is bribery and threats. Humans have morality. We don’t need religion.
Audiences change because life changes. Countries change geographically, climatically, socially and morally. Many things happen, and cinema, in a sense, reflects what’s happening in the world.
I always end up taking people that are morally ambiguous.
If we value what we’ve inherited for free – from other women – surely it’s right morally and ethically for us to wake up and say, ‘I’m a feminist. ‘
I don’t believe there’s any inherent darkness at the center of religion at all. I think religion actually is a morally neutral force.
It is morally wrong for this country to require our citizens to take on tens of thousands of dollars of debt to achieve the American Dream.
The anti-hero walks the morally gray path and constantly flirts with redemption, and that flirtation is just a blast to write.
What is needed to pass gay marriage is not a Democratic majority – this past year has proven that to be true – but politicians and judges comfortable enough to ignore what the majority of the voters want and do what is uncomfortable, unpopular – and morally right.
The rescue of a person, who is assaulted, or restrained of his liberty, without authority of law, is not only morally, but legally, a meritorious act; for every body is under obligation to go to the assistance of one who is assailed by assassins, robbers, ravishers, kidnappers, or ruffians of any kind.
Whatever anybody eats is their business. I’m just a vegetarian because I personally want to be. If my sons want to go have a steak… then that’s their decision. But coming from my hand, as their mother, I have to give them what I feel is good for them. I don’t take a stand morally. This is for myself.
I purposefully try to make films in that grey area, where things are morally ambiguous. It’s like life: good people do horrible things, and bad people do good things, and there’s beauty in horror and horror in beauty.
I am not a pacifist – I think that violence and self-defence are often morally justified.
In England, it’s thought to be morally suspect to worry about what your surroundings look like.
We grow with years more fragile in body, but morally stouter, and can throw off the chill of a bad conscience almost at once.
If you know something is morally reprehensible, then it is your moral obligation to stop it as soon as possible.
I get roles where I’m the activist type or I’m always morally upright.
I see how the Midwest distrusts the East Coast. The Midwest sees itself as morally superior. The Coast sees itself as intellectually superior. And the two are actually the same thing.
I don’t know if I would personally want to step in the cage and either have my face caved in or cave in somebody else’s, but I’ve met some really beautiful and sensitive and morally pretty stout individuals who happen to be fighters. It’s really awesome.
Veganism is a point of contention all year round. So much so that many vegans cut themselves off from the rest of society, huddling together for warmth and smugness, and using online forums to vent their disgust at the morally corrupt dairy- and meat-eating savages who make up most of the populace.
In abortion, the person who is massacred, physically and morally, is the woman.
Power has long been regarded as morally corrosive, and we often suspect the intentions of those who seek it.
A functioning, robust democracy requires a healthy educated, participatory followership, and an educated, morally grounded leadership.
I know why we can’t have a frank discussion with our policymakers – if you’re in the government or in law enforcement you cannot acknowledge that drugs are anything but inherently evil and morally wrong.
In Los Angeles, it’s like they jog for two hours a day and then they think they’re morally right. That’s when you want to choke people, you know?
If the federal government can mandate what we have to spend our own money on, then the federal government can make us buy something even if we are morally opposed to paying for it.
You know, there’s a difference between politicians and leaders. Politicians read poll numbers and compromise. Leaders do what’s morally right.
I’m truly convinced that by living up to the values we stand for, we can serve as a moral inspiration for others, just as we’ve been morally inspired by those who came before us.
I did not use paint, I made myself up morally.
The war on drugs is wrong, both tactically and morally. It assumes that people are too stupid, too reckless, and too irresponsible to decide whether and under what conditions to consume drugs. The war on drugs is morally bankrupt.
There is nothing politically right that is morally wrong.
There was a time when liberalism was identified with anti-Communism. But the Vietnam War led liberals into the arms of the Left, which had been morally confused about Communism since its inception and had become essentially pacifist following the carnage of World War I.
Fame is morally neutral.
To announce that there must be no criticism of the president… is morally treasonable to the American public.
It’s morally wrong, and economically self-defeating, that so much wealth flows upwards towards the richest of Americans, while millions work full time but still can’t provide for their families.
I do my research, and if I’m supporting something, then it’s because it aligns with me morally and ethically.
Gollum was so interesting to me because he’s morally ambivalent, and I love the notion of a quest that is to lose something. Not to gain, but to get rid of something.
We are fighting a Labour Party whose avowed enemy is capitalist bosses, whose instinct is to see income as a common pool resource, and whose leading figures find profit morally repugnant.
In my opinion, a master is morally obliged to seize every sort of opportunity and to try to solve the problems of the position without fear of some simplifications.
Real politics is messy and morally ambiguous and doesn’t make for a compelling thriller.
If you choose to put political expediency and politics ahead of the men and women on the ground, for that, you’ll have to answer to yourself. I find it morally reprehensible.
That goes against what I believe morally. That’s adultery, and if I’m accused of that, no, that’s not right. I have two kids who see that and remember that and judge me. It didn’t happen, and it’s not to be reported that way.
I am not alone in thinking that we are at a tipping point ecologically and morally and politically. Democracy cannot survive without a vibrant middle class, yet the policies of one of the parties has been committed to wiping it out for 30 years.
If you can write a character who is attractive but morally reprehensible, then you’ve got a character. It’s got to feel like people I know and it doesn’t just become a bag of tricks.
But black people fall for that same argument, and they go around talking about law breakers. We did not make the laws in this country. We are neither morally nor legally confined to those laws. Those laws that keep them up, keep us down.
If I as a storyteller and performer get to participate in something that can potentially elevate something in society, morally? I’m all for it.
