There are situations in which torture is not merely permissible but morally mandatory.
To act morally is not to act out of fear of punishment; it is not to act as one is commanded to act. Rather, it is to act as one ought to act. And how one ought to act is not dependent upon anyone's power, even if the power be Divine. - Steven M. Cahn
I am free, no matter what rules surround me. If I find them tolerable, I tolerate them; if I find them too obnoxious, I break them. I am free because I know that I alone am morally responsible for everything I do. - Robert A. Heinlein
A man is morally free when, in full possession of his living humanity, he judges the world, and judges other men, with uncompromising sincerity. - George Santayana
The victim is always morally superior to the master; that is the victim's ambivalent triumph. That is why there have been so few notoriously wicked women in comparison to the number of notoriously wicked men; our victim status ensures that we rarely have the opportunity. - Angela Carter
Marx hated weakness in men, and considered the making of moral judgements as the last resort of the weak. To say 'That is morally wrong' is implicitly to say ' I am powerless to stop that, so I will inveigh against it'. - Paul Robert Wolff
Keep extending hand for friendship. Those alive will grip yours with theirs, while the morally dead will inflate; rubbing their own palms. - Aniruddha Sastikar
The worst thing is that we live in a contaminated moral environment. We feel morally ill because we became used to saying something different from what we thought. Concepts such as love, friendship, compassion, humility or forgiveness lost their depth and dimension. - Václav Havel
It is morally appalling for the so called liberators of South Sudan to keep liberating their own people from a war that has already been won. - Duop Chak Wuol
We are born for the happiness. We are living for the happiness. To be happy we have to be morally free. To be morally free we have to treat the humanity with uncompromising sincerity. - Debasish Mridha
Religion grants its adherents malign, intoxicating and morally corrosive sensations. Destroying intellectual freedom is always evil, but only religion makes doing evil feel quite so good. - Philip Pullman
To be beautiful is a good thing, for which we should thank Nature—to be attractive, morally, rather than physically, is, however, a thing for which we should thank Nature even more, if she be good enough to have endowed us with that lasting quality. - Duchess
If art does not enlarge men's sympathies, it does nothing morally. - George Eliot
Moreover, if great men are the only hope of the Evolutionary Process, they are morally bound to rule over the masses for their own good -- we are all here on earth to help others: what on earth the others are here for, I don't know -- and the masses have no right whatsoever to resist them. - W.H. Auden
Hunting, works for conservation like slavery works for economic growth. A guaranteed but morally awful way to achieve a goal. - Peter Allison
Personal Responsibility is something that you should do because it is morally right, legally required, etc. - Sunday Adelaja
Nothing would disgust me more, morally, than receiving an Oscar. - Luis Bunuel
Speciesism is morally objectionable because, like racism, sexism, and heterosexism, it links personhood with an irrelevant criterion. Those who reject speciesism are committed to rejecting racism, sexism, heterosexism, and other forms of discrimination as well. - Gary L. Francione
A philosopher is someone who promotes moral excellence, argues for moral excellence, and gets other people to behave morally and excellently based on those arguments. - Stefan Molyneux
All we think about in the cycle of violence is men. If we miss the oestrogen factor we cannot solve the cycle of violence. We cannot bring peace to the world unless we hold women accountable and morally responsible, particularly for their attacks upon children. - Stefan Molyneux
The descent to barbarism had begun with Rotterdam. It ended with Dresden and then with Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Whatever moral differences had existed when the war began were erased by its end. The victors had been morally conquered by the enemy. - David McReynolds
What is morally wrong can never be advantageous, even when it enables you to make some gain that you believe to be to your advantage. The mere act of believing that some wrongful course of action constitutes an advantage is pernicious. - Marcus Tullius Cicero
It ought to be an offense to be excruciating and unfunny in circumstances where your audience is almost morally obliged to enthuse. - Christopher Hitchens
A cop's JOB is to violently enforce upon the rest of us whatever arbitrary bullshit the political parasites declare to be "law." It is, therefore, impossible to be a "law enforcer" and behave morally, for the same reason one can't be a moral car-jacker. - Larken Rose
To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public. - Theodore Roosevelt
To announce that there must be no criticism of the president, right or wrong - is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public. - Theodore Roosevelt
...morally speaking, there is no limit to the concern one must feel for the suffering of human beings, that indifference to evil is worse than evil itself, that in a free society, some are guilty, but all are responsible. - Abraham Joshua Heschel
If Art does not enlarge men’s sympathies, it does nothing morally. - George Eliot
God's grace does not come to people who morally outperform others, but to those who admit their failure to perform and who acknowledge their need for a Savior - Timothy J. Keller
We should never present flesh as somehow morally distinguishable from dairy. To the extent it is morally wrong to eat flesh, it is as morally wrong — and possibly more morally wrong — to consume dairy - Gary L. Francione