Immorality is transgressing accepted moral principles
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What is defined as immoral differs greatly from person to person
- Because of the diverse conditions of humans, it happens that some acts are virtuous to some people, as appropriate and suitable to them, while the same acts are immoral for others, as inappropriate to them. Thomas Aquinas
- Everything at some point has been declared the root of all evil. Criss Jami
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Some argue that you can tell an immoral act by the fact you feel bad after doing it
- About morals, I know only that what is moral is what you feel good after and what is immoral is what you feel bad after. Ernest Hemingway
- What is moral is what you feel good after, and what is immoral is what you feel bad after. Ernest Hemingway
- Conscience
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The problem is that immoral acts often feel great while you’re doing them!
- All the things I really like to do are either immoral, illegal or fattening. Alexander Woollcott
- Immorality: The morality of those who are having a better time. L. Mencken
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Immorality is a topic closely linked with religion
- You can see the same immorality or amorality in the Christian view of guilt and punishment. There are only two texts, both of them extreme and mutually contradictory. The Old Testament injunction is the one to exact an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth (it occurs in a passage of perfectly demented detail about the exact rules governing mutual ox-goring; you should look it up in its context (Exodus 21). The second is from the Gospels and says that only those without sin should cast the first stone. The first is a moral basis for capital punishment and other barbarities; the second is so relativistic and “nonjudgmental” that it would not allow the prosecution of Charles Manson. Our few notions of justice have had to evolve despite these absurd codes of ultra vindictiveness and ultracompassion. Christopher Hitchens
- In every age immorality has found no less support in religion than morality has. Sigmund Freud
- I refuse to be labeled immoral merely because I am godless. Peter Walker
- Religion
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Immorality is also closely linked with sexuality – hence the great popularity of chaperones in the past
- Chaperons, even in their days of glory, were almost never able to enforce morality; what they did was to force immorality to be discreet. This is no small contribution. Judith Martin
- Chaperons don’t enforce morality; they force immorality to be discreet. Judith Martin
- Sexuality
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In the labeling and condemning of immorality, hypocrisy often abounds
- An immoral character, glossed with religious pretention, is like a rotten egg with an Easter coloring. Lewis F. Korns
- The essence of immorality is the tendency to make an exception of myself. Jane Addams
- Immorality is the word we use to describe people that are not sinning the same way we are. Shannon L. Alder
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In the labeling and condemning of immorality, peer pressure often abounds
- Morality is the thing upon which your friends smile, and immorality is the thing upon which they frown. Elbert Hubbard
- People tend to associate anyone who looks and behaves differently with illegal or immoral activity. Marilyn Manson
- What is morality in any given time or place? It is what the majority then and there happen to like and immorality is what they dislike. Alfred North Whitehead
- Conformity
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Here are some judgements on what is immoral
- The essence of immorality is the tendency to make an exception of myself. Jane Addams
- The only immorality is not to do what one has to do when one has to do it. Jean Anouilh
- It is wrong and immoral to seek to escape the consequences of one’s acts. Mahatma Gandhi
- We tell lies, yet it is easy to show that lying is immoral. Epictetus
- Immorality is the word we use to describe people that are not sinning the same way we are. Shannon L. Alder
- Love is moral even without legal marriage, but marriage is immoral without love. Ellen Key
- If he be really and seriously seeking to live a good life, the first thing from which he will abstain will always be the use of animal food, because … its use is simply immoral, as it involves the performance of an act which is contrary to the moral feeling – killing. Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoy
- It is immoral to get drunk because the headache comes after the drinking, but if the headache came first and the drunkenness afterwards, it would be moral to get drunk. Samuel Butler
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Doing the wrong thing for the right reason is still immoral
- Do not do an immoral thing for moral reasons. Thomas Hardy
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Cruelty, some would argue, is the worst form of immorality there is
- If it were absolutely necessary to choose, I would rather be guilty of an immoral act than of a cruel one. Anatole France
- Cruelty
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Immorality, most argue, comes at a price
- Freedom’s enemies are waste, lethargy, indifference, immorality, and the insidious attitude of something for nothing. William Arthur Ward
- Fear, conformity, immorality: these are heavy burdens. They drain us of creative energy. And when we are drained of creative energy, we do not create. We procreate, but we do not create. David McCallum
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A few argue immorality can have beneficial consequences
- However great an evil immorality may be, we must not forget that it is not without its beneficial consequences. It is only through extremes that men can arrive at the middle path of wisdom and virtue. Wilhelm von Humboldt
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We are often fascinated by immorality, as it has a kind of perverse attraction
- Once is a man’s life, for one mortal moment, he must make a grab for immorality; if not, he has not lived. Sylvester Stallone
- The vampire craze is kind of fascinating. We’re interested in the idea of immorality and I think we’re drawn to people or creatures who can give in to those base impulses and just be bad and not feel bad about it. Benjamin Walker
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Governments, some argue, are often a hot bed of immorality
- Government is essentially immoral. Herbert Spencer
- People who relieve others of their money with guns are called robbers. It does not alter the immorality of the act when the income transfer is carried out by government. Cal Thomas
- The government forces you to give your money to things you don’t believe in, to have your money go to projects that might be inherently immoral. Randall Terry
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Many laws are seen as immoral, too
- There is a point at which the law becomes immoral and unethical. That point is reached when it becomes a cloak for the cowardice that dares not stand up against blatant violations of justice. Kurt Huber
- When your conscience says law is immoral, don’t follow it. Jack Kevorkian
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People often label certain art as immoral – but is it?
- Good art however ‘immoral’ is wholly a thing of virtue. Good art can NOT be immoral. By good art I mean art that bears true witness, I mean the art that is most precise. Ezra Pound
- The true artist doesn’t substitute immorality for morality. On the contrary, he always substitutes a finer morality for a grosser one. David Herbert Lawrence
- Art
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People often label violence in movies as immoral – but is it?
- How a society channels male aggression is one of the greatest questions as to whether that society will survive. That’s why I am not against violence in the media, I am against the glorification of immoral violence. Dennis Prager
- You have to show violence the way it is. If you don’t show it realistically, then that’s immoral and harmful. If you don’t upset people, then that’s obscenity. Roman Polanski
- Violence, Movies
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People often label certain books as immoral – but are they?
- The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame. Oscar Wilde
- There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. Oscar Wilde
- Books, Reading
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Reason without compassion can lead to immorality
- If it is not tempered by compassion, and empathy, reason can lead men and women into a moral void. Karen Armstrong
- Compassion, Reason
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Animals are never immoral – or are they?
- Cats are autocrats of naked self-interest. They are both amoral and immoral, consciously breaking rules. Their ”evil” look at such times is no human projection: the cat may be the only animal who savors the perverse or reflects upon it. Camille Paglia
- Animals
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Final thoughts
- Algy, you always adopt a strictly immoral attitude towards life. You are not quite old enough to do that. Oscar Wilde
- Here is true immorality: ignorance and stupidity; the devil is nothing but this. His name is Legion. Gustave Flaubert
- I am not only wrong, it appears, I am also immoral – the familiar step in Puritan logic. Henry Louis Mencken
- I think “immoral” is probably the wrong word to use… I prefer the word “unethical.” Ivan Boesky
- And he continued to stare at her, afflicted by the thought that where Beauty was, nothing ever ran quite straight, which, no doubt, was why so many people looked on it as immoral. John Galsworthy
- Call a thing immoral or ugly, soul-destroying or a degradation of man, a peril to the peace of the world or to the well-being of future generations; as long as you have not shown it to be ”uneconomic” you have not really questioned its right to exist, grow, and prosper. E. F. Schumacher
- Fashion is neither moral or immoral, but it is for rebuilding the morale. Karl Lagerfeld
- I find it a challenge to cooperate in a society where it’s considered moral to critique a résumé yet immoral to critique morality. Criss Jami
- Immorality sanctified by tradition is still immorality. Bernard E. Rollin
- Men are more moral than they think and far more immoral than they can imagine. Sigmund Freud
- Moral evil is the immorality and pain and suffering and tragedy that come because we choose to be selfish, arrogant, uncaring, hateful and abusive. Lee Strobel
- The cosmos is neither moral or immoral; only people are. He who would move the world must first move himself. Edward Ericson
- To be ashamed of one’s immorality: that is a step on the staircase at whose end one is also ashamed of one’s morality. Friedrich Nietzsche
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On a lighter note
- I like the English. They have the most rigid code of immorality in the world. Malcolm Bradbury
- Immorality: the morality of those who are having a better time. H. L. Mencken
- All the things I really like to do are either immoral, illegal, or fattening. Alexander Woollcott
- My father: one of the great immoral, er immortals of our time. C. Fields
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