When does moral duty yield to the necessity of compromise in war?

“ It had been made too clear to be denied, that moral righteousness is of indispensable obligation, so long as there is a God to serve, or common sense is allowed to have any hand in explaining his laws. ”

“ It is true that the moral consciousness of the world must recognize the importance of removing injustices and well-founded grievances; but at the same time it must be aroused to the cardinal necessity of honoring sanctity of treaties, of respecting the rights and liberties of others and of putting an end to acts of international aggression. ”

“ An action that is consistent with the autonomy of the will is PERMITTED; one that does not agree therewith is FORBIDDEN. A will whose maxims necessarily coincide with the laws of autonomy is a HOLY will, good absolutely. The dependence of a will not absolutely good on the principle of autonomy (moral necessitation) is obligation. This then cannot be applied to a holy being. The objective necessity of actions from obligation is called DUTY. ”

“ Slavery is founded in the selfishness of man's nature—opposition to it in his love of justice. These principles are an eternal antagonism, and when brought into collision so fiercely as slavery extension brings them, shocks and throes and convulsions must ceaselessly follow. Repeal the Missouri Compromise, repeal all compromises, repeal the Declaration of Independence, repeal all past history, you still cannot repeal human nature. It still will be the abundance of man's heart that slavery extension is wrong, and out of the abundance of his heart his mouth will continue to speak. ”

“ Our people are now scattered around the world. They are looking for security. They are looking for a way to stay in peace. As you once searched.
This Russian invasion of Ukraine is not just a military operation, as Moscow claims. This is a large-scale and treacherous war aimed at destroying our people. Destroying our children, our families. Our state. Our cities. Our communities. Our culture. And everything that makes Ukrainians Ukrainians. Everything that Russian troops are now destroying. ”

“ Today, it is as a result of Russia's actions on the territory of my state, on the territory of Ukraine, that the most heinous war crimes of all time since the end of World War II are being committed.
Russian troops are deliberately destroying Ukrainian cities to ashes with artillery and air strikes.
They are deliberately blocking cities, creating mass starvation in them. They are deliberately shooting at columns of civilians on the roads who are trying to escape from the territory of hostilities. ”

“ I agree in theory with people like Raney, who say we must get value for the lives we're spending, but I can't do it! Nobody can do it. The men out there who are paying the price want to forget about the whole thing, they'll come home at the end as they come home now on leave, to attend to their own affairs, to enjoy themselves, to make up for lost time and recapture the years they've wasted in the trenches. And the people who've never been out have forgotten all the old good resolutions; they're as tired of the war as the soldiers, tired of drudgery, discomfort, economising ”

“ If those questions had been decided as some violent enemies of the Company predicted, that great body would have been utterly ruined. The very meaning of compromise is that each party gives up his chance of complete success, in order to be secured against the chance of utter failure. And, as men of sanguine minds always overrate the chances in their own favour, every fair compromise is sure to be severely censured on both sides. ”

“ The question with us is that of national unity and existence, and compromise is treason. To acknowledge the doctrine of secession, to abdicate the power of self-preservation, and permit the Union to be dissolved or disintegrated, is ruin, disgrace, and suicide. We must fight it out to the last. If necessity requires, we can live at home, and reverses or intervention should only increase our efforts. If need be, all—all who can bear arms, must take the field, and leave to those who can not, the pursuits of industry. ”

“ The great implication in this necessity, as we shall hereafter see in examining the nature of virtue, is that the principle of righteousness or the law of duty is something that belongs to the objective order of the world as constituted by God, a divine reality permanent and immutable, not produced but perceived by the conscience. It is not made by man but finds him—finds him through the intelligence by which he is informed of the realities to which he must adjust his life. Moral law stands for a reality that rays itself into view in the human reason whether men will or not. ”

“ If the necessary has thus an imperative character, the feeling experienced will be that of approbation. If necessity has the character of a want, the feeling experienced will be that of pleasure, and both will be strong in proportion as the satisfaction will be contingent. Now, underlying every moral judgment there is a requirement of reason which requires us to act conformably with the moral law, and it is an absolute necessity that we should wish what is good. But as the will is free, it is physically an accidental thing that we should do in fact what is good. ”

“ Since the decision of the conscience, when rightly and fully reached, is, at the time it is given and as to the point it decides, the soul's conviction as to what is right and duty, to violate or disregard it becomes necessarily the very essence of the immoral95 spirit and conduct. To go contrary to what the soul sees as duty, through the only capacity it has for knowing it, is essentially moral rottenness. ”

“ Just, in fact, as the reason in the exercise of its moral jurisdiction is little troubled to know if the decisions it can come to will satisfy or not the sensuous nature, so the sensuous in the exercise of the right which is proper to it does not trouble itself whether its decisions would satisfy pure reason or not. Each is equally necessary, though different in necessity, and this character of necessity would be destroyed if it were permitted for one to modify arbitrarily the decisions of the other. ”

“ If, for example, duty commands us to perform an action that revolts our taste, or if taste feels itself drawn towards an object which reason as a moral judge is obliged to condemn, then, in fact, we suddenly encounter the necessity of distinguishing between the requirements of the moral sense and those of the aesthetic sense, which so long an agreement had almost confounded to such a degree that they could not be distinguished. ”

“ If we actually do it, this agreement between the contingent in the use of free will and the imperative demand of reason gives rise to our assent or approbation, which will be greater in proportion as the resistance of the inclinations made this use that we make of our free will more accidental and more doubtful. Every aesthetic judgment, on the contrary, refers the object to the necessity which cannot help willing imperatively, but only desires that there should be an agreement between the accidental and its own interest. ”

“ The will of man is a privilege, a sublime idea, even when we do not consider the moral use that he can make of it. But firstly, the animal nature must be in abeyance before approaching the other, and from that cause it is always a considerable step towards reaching the moral emancipation of the will to have conquered in us the necessity of nature, even in indifferent things, by the exercise in us of the simple will.
The jurisdiction of nature extends as far as the will, but there it stops, and the empire of reason commences. ”

“ By these words, "the other forces of nature," we must understand all that is not moral force, all that is not subject to the supreme legislation of reason: that is to say, feelings, affections, instincts, passions, as well as physical necessity and destiny. The more redoubtable the adversary, the more glorious the victory; resistance alone brings out the strength of the force and renders it visible. It follows that the highest degree of moral consciousness can only exist in strife, and the highest moral pleasure is always accompanied by pain. ”

“ Now we only know of two sources of pleasure—the satisfaction of the instinct of happiness, and the accomplishment of the moral laws. Therefore, when it is shown that a particular pleasure does not emanate from the former source, it must of necessity issue from the second. It is therefore from our moral nature that issues the charm of the painful affections shared by sympathy, and the pleasure that we sometimes feel even where the painful affection directly affects ourselves. ”

“ All man's goodness is necessarily man's achievement. And the realization by the ideal of itself is man's achievement of it. For it is his ideal. The law without is also the law within. It is the law within because it is recognized as the law without. Thus, the moral consciousness passes into the religious consciousness. The performance of duty is the willing service of the absolute good; and, as such, it involves also the recognition of a purpose that cannot fail. It is both activity and faith, both a struggle and a consciousness of victory, both morality and religion. ”

“ Outer law and inner motive are, for the poet, manifestations of the same beneficent purpose; and instead of duty in the sense of an autocratic imperative, or beneficent tyranny, he finds, deep beneath man's foolishness and sin, a constant tendency towards the good which is bound up with the very nature of man's reason and will. If man could only understand himself he would find without him no limiting necessity, but the manifestation of a law which is one with his own essential being. ”

“ Thus then, in the indifferent sphere of physical life, man ought to already commence his moral life; his own proper activity ought already to make way in passivity, and his rational liberty beyond the limits of sense; he ought already to impose the law of his will upon his inclinations; he ought—if you will permit me the expression—to carry into the domain of matter the war against matter, in order to be dispensed from combating this redoubtable enemy upon the sacred field of liberty; he ought to learn to have nobler desires, not to be forced to have sublime volitions. ”

“ Their position so conflicting with the smiling destiny they reject, the reward of misery given to virtue—all here awakens in us the feeling of impropriety: it ought to fill us with great distress. What is nature, and what are her ends and laws, if all this impropriety shows us moral propriety in its full light. We here see the triumph of the moral law, so sublime an experience for us that we might even hail the calamity which elicits it. For harmony in the world of moral freedom gives us infinitely more pleasure than all the discords in nature give us pain. ”

“ At dozens of other places throughout your beautiful country, Canada. Cruise missiles. Even before dawn. And your children hug you and ask: “what happened, dad?” And you are already receiving the first reports on which facilities in your country have been destroyed by missiles of the Russian Federation. And you know how many people have already died and where.
Imagine you are looking for words to explain this to children. Explain to them that a large-scale war has begun.
The war aimed at the destruction of your state, at the conquest of your people. And you know it. ”

“ Millions won't have neither heating nor running water. All of these will be the result of Russian missile and drone attacks on our energy infrastructure. But we do not complain. We do not judge and compare whose lives are easier, your well-being is the product of your national security. The result of your struggle for independence and your many victories, we Ukrainians will also go through our war of independence and freedom with dignity and success. ”

“ We invite our partners in Europe to take patronage over a city, region or industry that has suffered from Russia's aggression. Your potential, your inner strength can create a new example of leadership in building a civilized and peaceful life.
I am sincerely grateful to all the Romanian people for their kind treatment of Ukrainian immigrants who have found safety on your land. I hope that together we will be able to create such conditions as soon as possible, when Russia will give up the war, and so our people will be able to return home to Ukraine. ”

“ Unforeseen accidents may derange our most profound schemes of policy. Victory may be inconstant to our arms. But there are triumphs which are followed by no reverse. There is an empire exempt from all natural causes of decay. Those triumphs are the pacific triumphs of reason over barbarism; that empire is the imperishable empire of our arts and our morals, our literature and our laws. ”

“ Disingenuousness or self-illusion, arising from a depressing deference to the existing state of things, or to what is immediately practicable, or to what other people would think of us if they knew our thoughts, is the result of compromising truth in the matter of forming and holding opinions. Secondly, positive simulation is what comes of an unlawful willingness to compromise in the matter of avowing and publishing them. Finally, pusillanimity or want of faith is the vice that belongs to unlawful compromise in the department of action and realisation. ”

“ What if we act as if we had lot our assurance of our ability to achieve success in the game of war? They will take new hope and courage. And is not an offer of a compromise, that is, an offer to abandon some essential point determined in the election of 1860, an indication of a flagging and uncertain spirit? The matter resolves itself into this: The rebels will not think of accepting a compromise, until their prospects are so obscured and their power so reduced, that they would be obliged to submit without it. ”

“ A change of posture, then a sharp crack, a whizzing bullet, a bleeding victim, a death struggle, a pallid corpse.
That was a sad Sabbath for the Covenanters. Defeat, dishonor, and distress turned the day into a painful memory. The calamity, doubtless, arose out of the compromise of Covenanted principles. Welch's wisdom proved to be foolishness; Weir's strength, weakness; Hamilton's compliance, defeat.
The sacrifice of truth can never be productive of good. Loss, sorrow, defeat, and death are in the train of any policy that buries principle. ”

“ I have no faith in the wisdom of that policy of expediency which consists in forming alliances with heterogeneous elements, and in compromising leading principles for the sake of gaining numerical strength. [Cheers.] Temporary successes may, indeed, be achieved by such operations, and short-sighted men who consider themselves eminently practical, may glory in their exploits. But they are only too apt to forget, that serious moral defeats have sometimes been suffered in apparent victories, and moral victories have been won in apparent defeats. ”

“ And what is this smile of the world, to win which we are bidden to sacrifice our moral manhood; this frown of the world, whose terrors are more awful than the withering up of truth and the slow going out of light within the souls of us? ”

“ If men will permit themselves to think, as rational beings ought to think, nothing can appear more ridiculous and absurd, exclusive of all moral reflections, than to be at the expence of building navies, filling them with men, and then hauling them into the ocean, to try which can sink each other fastest. Peace, which costs nothing, is attended with infinitely more advantage, than any victory with all its expence. But this, though it best answers the purpose of nations, does not that of court governments, whose habited policy is pretence for taxation, places, and offices. ”

“ Here is our opportunity and our challenge. If the nuclear powers are prepared to declare a truce, let us seize the moment to strengthen the institutions and procedures which will serve as the means for the pacific settlement of disputes among men. ”

“ The task of building the peace lies with the leaders of every nation, large and small. For the great powers have no monopoly on conflict or ambition. The cold war is not the only expression of tension in this world--and the nuclear race is not the only arms race. Even little wars are dangerous in a nuclear world. The long labor of peace is an undertaking for every nation--and in this effort none of us can remain unaligned. To this goal none can be uncommitted. ”

“ We shall support vigorously the principle that no country has the right to impose its will or rule on another by force.
We shall continue, in this era of negotiation, to work for the limitation of nuclear arms, and to reduce the danger of confrontation between the great powers.
We shall do our share in defending peace and freedom in the world. But we shall expect others to do their share.
The time has passed when America will make every other nation's conflict our own, or make every other nation's future our responsibility, or presume to tell the people of other nations how to manage their own affairs. ”

“ Who will refuse to admit that it is constantly preventing much wrong, and calling into existence many a good action, often quite unexpectedly, and where there is no hope of reward ? Is there any one who will gainsay the fact that, where it and it alone has been operative, we all with deep respect and emotion unreservedly recognise the presence of genuine moral worth ?
(4) Boundless compassion for all living beings is the surest and most certain guarantee of pure moral conduct, and needs no casuistry. ”

“ Cruelty, which means the maximum deficiency in Compassion, is the mark of the deepest moral depravity. Therefore the real moral incentive must "be Compassion.
(3) Compassion is the only thoroughly effective spring of moral conduct.
(4) Limitless Compassion for all living things is the surest and most certain token of a really good man. ”

“ When Russia destroyed peace for the entire Ukraine, we immediately saw that the world is truly against the war. Truly for freedom. Truly for global security. Truly for the harmonious development of every society. Japan has become the leader of this position in Asia. You immediately started working to stop this brutal war started by the Russian Federation. You immediately started working for peace in Ukraine. Hence, in Europe. And this is really very important. It is important for everyone on Earth. ”