10 Lois McMaster Bujold Quotes on Ethics

Lois McMaster Bujold quotes on ethics

6. Any community's arm of force - military, police, security - needs people in it who can do necessary evil, and yet not be made evil by it. To do only the necessary and no more. To constantly question the assumptions, to stop the slide into atrocity.

9. You can't choose between evil and evil, in the dark, by logic. You can only cling to some safety line of principle.

16. It's... a transcendental act. Making life. I thought about that when I was carrying Miles. 'By this act, I bring one death into the world.' One birth, one death, and all the pain and acts of will between.

76. It is always easier to get forgiveness than permission

79. If the truth doesn't save us, what does that say about us?

83. I take it as a man's duty to restrain himself.

88. God's not here. Somebody's got to fill in.

97. Some prices are just too high, no matter how much you may want the prize. The one thing you can't trade for your heart's desire is your heart.

111. He said that permitting private judgments to turn my duty in the smallest matter would be just like getting a little bit pregnant--that the consequences would very soon get beyond me.

126. If we shouldn't do it, we shouldn't be able to do it.