top of page
.png){kind=small}
Ethics Quotes
"To use for our exclusive benefit what is not ours is theft."
39
"In matters of conscience, the law of the majority has no place."
28
"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."
22
"The first step in the evolution of ethics is a sense of solidarity with other human beings."
21
"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."
18
"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."
17
"I have been committed to carrying out my duties... in accordance with both the letter and spirit of all applicable rules of ethics and canons of conduct."
14
"Man's life is the standard of morality, but your own life is its purpose . If existence on earth is your goal, you must choose your actions and values by the standard of that which is proper to man-for the purpose of preserving, fulfilling and enjoying the irreplaceable value which is your life."
13
"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."
13
"Having knowledge of an unethical act and allowing it to continue can spread a contagion that can affect multiple beings in society."
13
"You should never be surprised when someone treats you with respect, you should expect it."
13
"Knowledge has a great power. Therefore, unethical use of knowledge can be extremely harmful."
12
"The meaning of man's existence is not to dominate over others, but to better humanity."
12
"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."
11
"Nothing gets a bigger laugh than when you refer to things like ethics or human rights."
11
"The man who has a conscience suffers whilst acknowledging his sin. That is his punishment."
11
"Perhaps in the back of our minds we already understand, without all the science I've discussed, that something terribly wrong is happening. Our sustenance now comes from misery. We know that if someone offers to show us a film on how our meat is produced, it will be a horror film. We perhaps know more than we care to admit, keeping it down in the dark places of our memory-- disavowed. When we eat factory-farmed meat we live, literally, on tortured flesh. Increasingly, that tortured flesh is becoming our own."
11
"It is better to tell the truth and face the punishment, than to lie and face the consequences."
11
"What does it mean to live in truth? Putting it negatively is easy enough: it means not lying, not hiding, and not dissimulating."
11
"War as a moral metaphor is limited, limiting, and dangerous. By reducing the choices of action to "a war against whatever-it-is, you divide the world into Me or Us (good) and Them or It (bad) and reduce the ethical complexity and moral richness of our life to Yes/No, On/Off."
10
"Do not do unto others as you would that they should do unto you. Their tastes may not be the same."
10
"It's a general rule " a law of space, as it was a law of the sea in the old days, that ships had to respond to distress calls. Unless of course it places their own lives in danger. Bearing this thought in mind, as you can probably tell by my writing, my fingers are beginning to tremble slightly."
10
"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."
10
"In law a man is guilty when he violates the rights of others. In ethics he is guilty if he only thinks of doing so."
9
"Always recognize that human individuals are ends, and do not use them as means to your end."
9
"All selling should spring from service."
9
"If we accept being talked to any kind of a way, then we are telling ourselves we are not quite worth the best. And if we have the effrontery to talk to anybody with less than courtesy, we tell ourselves and the world we are not very intelligent."
9
"Good is not always good."
9
"The real trouble is that 'kindness' is a quality fatally easy to attribute to ourselves on quite inadequate grounds. Everyone feels benevolent if nothing happens to be annoying him at the moment. Thus a man easily comes to console himself for all his other vices by a conviction that 'his heart's in the right place' and 'he wouldn't hurt a fly,' though in fact he has never made the slightest sacrifice for a fellow creature. We think we are kind when we are only happy: it is not so easy, on the same grounds, to imagine oneself temperate, chaste, or humble."
8
"Caleb told me that our mother said there was evil in everyone, and the first step to loving someone else is to recognize that evil in ourselves, so we can forgive them."
8
"When we lift our forks, we hang our hats somewhere. We set ourselves in one relationship or another to farmed animals, farm-workers, national economies, and global markets. Not making a decision--eating 'like everyone else'--is to make the easiest decision, a decision that is increasingly problematic."
8
bottom of page