Augustine Mozak

“The chaplain had sinned, and it was good. Common sense told him that telling lies and defecting from duty were sins. On the other hand, everyone knew that sin was evil and that no good could come from evil. But he did feel good; he felt positively marvelous. Consequently, it followed logically that telling lies and defecting from duty could not be sins.
"The chaplain had mastered, in a moment of divine intuition, the handy technique of protective rationalization, and he was exhilarated by the discovery. It was miraculous.
"It was almost no trick at all, he saw, to turn vice into virtue, slander into truth, impotence into abstinence, arrogance into humility, plunder into philanthropy, thievery into honor, blasphemy into wisdom, brutality into patriotism, and sadism into justice. Anybody could do it; it required no brains at all. It merely required no character.”
― Joseph Heller, Catch-22

“Acting without knowing takes you right off the cliff.”
― Ray Bradbury, Something Wicked This Way Comes

“On the day after humans disappear, nature takes over and immediately begins cleaning house—or houses, that is. Cleans them right off the face of the Earth. They all go.

If you're a homeowner, you already knew it was only a matter of time for yours, but you've resisted admitting it, even as erosion callously attacked, starting with your savings. Back when they told you what your house would cost, nobody mentioned what you'd also be paying so that nature wouldn't repossess it long before the bank.”
― Alan Weisman, The World Without Us Reprint edition by Weisman, Alan (2008) Library Binding

“let himself be drawn hither by the coercion of the phenomena themselves”
― Martin Heidegger, Being and Time