Jumping Off the Slippery Slope/Quotes

"People like this focus on purity, they view consensus and incremental progress as a sort of betrayal. Purity of cause, ideological purity and the purifying effect of violence crop up whenever the mindset corrupts one cause or another. It is not an illness of any particular ideology. Self-righteous manicheanism is an inbuilt weakness, a mold that grows on lazy minds, whenever a group meets a cause."

"He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster. And when you gaze long into an abyss the abyss also gazes into you."

—Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil

"For if once a man indulges himself in murder, very soon he comes to think little of robbing; and from robbing he comes next to drinking and Sabbath-breaking, and from that to incivility and procrastination. Once begun upon this downward path, you never know where you are to stop. Many a man has dated his ruin from some murder or other that perhaps he thought little of at the time."

—Thomas de Quincey, Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts

Mitani: I mean, really, when you think about it logically, what's so wrong with being gay? And as long as you're gay, what's wrong with taking a student lover half your age? And seeing your young lover mutilate himself horribly? And poisoning a priest when he finds out what you've been up to? And then horribly mutilating another young lover when he finds out about the first one?

Tsuzuki: ...I guess this would be that 'slippery slope' argument I keep hearing about.

—Cropped Scan Theater

"Slippery slopes can be fun -- kind of like a water slide."

—Larry, Burn Notice

"I'm not a warrior. I'm not a soldier of any kind. It's only a short step from there to calling yourself a crusader, or something equally dubious. Too many powerful people make these silly declarations...then it's all "holy war" and "sacred destiny". That's generally when the trouble starts."

—Superman, JLA/Hitman