A Quote by Oriana Fallaci

There are moments in Life when keeping silent becomes a fault, and speaking an obligation. A civic duty, a moral challenge, a categorical imperative from which we cannot escape.

Oriana Fallaci

Quote Topics

Becomes Cannot Categorical Imperative Challenge Civic Civic Duty Duty Escape Fault Imperative Keeping Keeping Silent Life Moments Moral Obligation Silent Speaking We Cannot Which

Quote Author

Oriana Fallaci
Italian - Journalist
June 29, 1929 - September 15, 2006

The writer’s job is to write with rigor, with commitment, to defend what they believe with all the talent they have. I think that’s part of the moral obligation of a writer, which cannot be only purely artistic. I think a writer has some kind of responsibility at least to participate in the civic debate. I think literature is impoverished, if it becomes cut from the main agenda of people, of society, of life.

Mario Vargas Llosa

I regard the state of which I am a citizen as a public utility, like the organization that supplies me with water, gas, and electricity. I feel that it is my civic duty to pay my taxes as well as my other bills, and that it is my moral duty to make an honest declaration of my income to the income tax authorities. But I do not feel that I and my fellow citizens have a religious duty to sacrifice our lives in war on behalf of our own state, and, a fortiori, I do not feel that we have an obligation or a right to kill and maim citizens of other states or to devastate their land.

Arnold J. Toynbee

Society cannot escape what is essentially a moral question: When does human life deserve legal protection from the state? And society certainly cannot escape this dilemma by denying that it is fundamentally a moral issue, no matter what position one chooses.

Blase J. Cupich

It would not be correct to say that every moral obligation involves a legal duty; but every legal duty is founded on a moral obligation.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

A categorical imperative would be one which represented an action as objectively necessary in itself, without reference to any other purpose.

Immanuel Kant

Anyway, it's not true that the authorities cannot access the content of the phone even if there is no back door. When I was at the NSA, we did this every single day, even on Sundays. I believe that encryption is a civic responsibility, a civic duty.

Edward Snowden

War is a biological necessity of the first importance, a regulative element in the life of mankind which cannot be dispensed with. ... But it is not only a biological law but a moral obligation and, as such, an indispensable factor in civilization.

Friedrich von Bernhardi

We are humanity, Kant says. Humanity needs us because we are it. Kant believes in duty and considers remaining alive a primary human duty. For him one is not permitted to “renounce his personality,” and while he states living as a duty, it also conveys a kind of freedom: we are not burdened with the obligation of judging whether our personality is worth maintaining, whether our life is worth living. Because living it is a duty, we are performing a good moral act just by persevering.

Jennifer Michael Hecht

There is only one categorical imperative in golf, and that is to hit the ball. There are no minor absolutes.

Charles Walter Simpson

On an occasion of this kind it becomes more than a moral duty to speak one's mind. It becomes a pleasure.

Oscar Wilde

Selfishness is the bedrock on which all moral behavior starts and it can be immoral only when it conflicts with a higher moral imperative.

Robert A. Heinlein

No one will escape justice. It's a moral and judicial duty.

Jovenel Moise

Morality, after all, has nothing to do with selflessness. On the contrary, self-interest is precisely the basis of the categorical imperative.

Frans de Waal

We confuse insurance with our moral obligation to provide health-care services to people. And what we try to do is finance our moral obligation through the insurance system, which punishes the people who are fiscally responsible to buy insurance.

Ron Williams

The other creatures with which we share this world have their rights too, but not speaking our language, they have no voice, no vote; it is our moral duty to take care of them.