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Ethics Quotes
"Requiring accountability while also extending your compassion is not the easiest course of action, but it is the most humane, and, ultimately, the safest for the community."
226
"Forgiveness is created by the restitution of the abuser, of the wrongdoer. It is not something to be squeeeeeezed out of the victim in a further act of conscience-corrupting abuse."
182
"In matters of conscience, the law of the majority has no place."
181
"To use for our exclusive benefit what is not ours is theft."
167
"A man's ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties and needs; no religious basis is necessary. Man would be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hopes of reward after death."
161
"You have the chance to remain silent. Everything you say will be misused."
131
"I will call no being good who is not what I mean when I apply that epithet to my fellow creatures; and if such a creature can sentence me to hell for not so calling him, to hell I will go ."
103
"That's what I consider true generosity: You give your all, and yet you always feel as if it costs you nothing."
87
"We read the Golden Rule and judge it to be a brilliant distillation of many of our ethical impulses. And then we come across another of God's teachings on morality: if a man discovers on his wedding night that his bride is not a virgin, he must stone her to death on her father's doorstep (Deuteronomy 22:13-21)."
86
"Treat people as an end, and never as a means to an end."
83
"We have also set up the national institute for ethics. This institute and also the implementation of the national integrity plan, that will certainly do the follow up that is necessary for this."
80
"A body of men holding themselves accountable to nobody ought not to be trusted by anybody."
78
"In the realm of power, Christianity has operated with an unmitigated arrogance and cruelty-necessarily, since a religion ordinarily imposes on those who have discovered the true faith the spiritual duty of liberating the infidels. This particular true faith, moreover, is more deeply concerned about the soul than it is about the body, to which fact the flesh (and the corpses) of countless infidels bears witness."
75
"Ethics is the activity of man directed to secure the inner perfection of his own personality."
73
"I do not believe one can settle how much we ought to give. I am afraid the only safe rule is to give more than we can spare. In other words, if our expenditure on comforts, luxuries, amusements, etc, is up to the standard common among those with the same income as our own, we are probably giving away too little. If our charities do not at all pinch or hamper us, I should say they are too small. There ought to be things we should like to do and cannot do because our charitable expenditure excludes them."
72
"Compassion is not religious business, it is human business, it is not luxury, it is essential for our own peace and mental stability, it is essential for human survival."
72
"Am I a good person? Deep down, do I even really want to be a good person, or do I only want to seem like a good person so that people (including myself) will approve of me? Is there a difference? How do I ever actually know whether I'm bullshitting myself, morally speaking?"
72
"You can't assume the responsibility for everything you do-or don't do."
71
"The topic of compassion is not at all religious business; it is important to know it is human business, it is a question of human survival."
70
"The first step in the evolution of ethics is a sense of solidarity with other human beings."
70
"What does it mean to live in truth? Putting it negatively is easy enough: it means not lying, not hiding, and not dissimulating."
70
"There is no person on earth so bad that he does not have something about him that is praiseworthy. Why is it, then, that we leave the good out of sight and feast our eyes on the unclean things? It is as though we enjoyed only looking at " if you will pardon the expression " a man's behind."
69
"There was a distinction between lying and telling half-truths, but it was a very narrow one."
68
"Having knowledge of an unethical act and allowing it to continue can spread a contagion that can affect multiple beings in society."
67
"No man is so exquisitely honest or upright in living but that ten times in his life he might not lawfully be hanged."
67
"It is often the people who refuse to assume any responsibility who are apt to be the sharpest critics of those who do."
65
"A man's ethical behaviour should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties and needs; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death."
65
"Is what I did really so much worse than what anybody else does?Is it really so much worse than what you do?Think about it."
65
"Compassion is an unstable emotion. It needs to be translated into action, or it withers."
64
"I am bound by conscience and the word of God. Therefore I can and will recant nothing, because to act against one's conscience is neither safe nor salutary. Here I stad. I can do no ether. So help me God."
64
"To photograph people is to violate them, by seeing them as they never see themselves, by having knowledge of them that they can never have; it turns people into objects that can be symbolically possessed. Just as a camera is a sublimation of the gun, to photograph someone is a subliminal murder - a soft murder, appropriate to a sad, frightened time."
64
"Every man is to be respected as an absolute end in himself: and it is a crime against the dignity that belongs to him as a human being to use him as a mere means for some external purpose."
63
"As told by Kafka's close friend Max Brod:"Suddenly he began to speak to the fish in their illuminated tanks. 'Now at least I can look at you in peace, I don't eat you anymore.' It was the time he turned strictly vegetarian."
62
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