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Ethics Quotes
"The missing link between humans and apes? It's certainly those brutes who haven't yet learned to respect privacy."
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"If you believe in peace, act peacefully; if you believe in love, acting lovingly; if you believe every which way, then act every which way, that's perfectly valid - but don't go out trying to sell your beliefs to the system. You end up contradicting what you profess to believe in, and you set a bum example. If you want to change the world, change yourself."
3
"I would rather contend with an honest asshole than a duplicitous diplomat."
3
"I ended my statement to the colored soldiers by saying: "Now, I shall be very sorry to hurt you, and you don't know whether or not I will keep my word, but my men can tell you that I always do;" whereupon my cow-punchers, hunters, and miners solemnly nodded their heads and commented in chorus, exactly as if in a comic opera, "He always does; he always does!"
3
"Never mistaken humility for foolishness, nor pride for power."
3
"It is generally, in the season of prosperity that men discover their real temper, principles and design."
3
"My only policy is to profess evil and do good."
3
"No country can police corruption in other countries when it itself is not free from corruption. You cannot clean a dirty wall with dirty hands."
3
"Society is neither my master nor my servant, neither my father nor my sister; and so long as she does not bar my way to the kingdom of heaven, which is the only society worth getting into, I feel no right to complain of how she treats me. I have no claim on her; I do not acknowledge her laws--hardly her existence, and she has no authority over me. Why should she, how could she, constituted as she is, receive such as me? The moment she did so, she would cease to be what she is; and, if all be true that one hears of her, she does me a kindness in excluding me. What can it matter to me, Letty, whether they call me a lady or not, so long as Jesus says "Daughter to me?"
3
"How can one ever do anything nobly Christian, living among people with such petty thoughts?"
3
"Thus, dear friends, I have said it clearly enough, and I believe you ought to understand it and not make liberty a law..."
3
"Unlimited power in the hands of limited people always leads to cruelty."
3
"The power of a man's virtue should not be measured by his special efforts but by his ordinary doing."
3
"Sweep aside those hatred-eaten mystics, who pose as friends of humanity and preach that the highest virtue man can practice is to hold his own life as of no value. Do they tell you that the purpose of morality is to curb man's instinct of self-preservation? It is for the purpose of self-preservation that man needs a code of morality. The only man who desires to be moral is the man who desires to live."
3
"The urge to lie is produced by the contradictions in our lives. We are made to declare love for our country, while it tramples our rights and dignity."
3
"I believe the devil exists in those little, seemingly unnoticeable moments when we choose to value our own insecurities over the service of others."
3
"It would be a sin to help you destroy yourself."
3
"A victory with so many victims is nothing but the biggest defeat!"
3
"I've never seen exquisite fallen beings, and I never shall see them, but such creatures as that painted Frenchwoman at the counter with the ringlets are vermin to my mind, and all fallen women are the same.' 'But the Magdalen?' 'Ah, drop that! Christ would never have said those words if He had known how they would be abused. Of all the Gospel those words are the only ones remembered."
3
"Today, we have mercenaries in Africa, corporate armies from the western world, and unemployed men throughout the Middle East killing their own people - and people of other nations - for a paycheck. To act without a conscience, but for a paycheck, makes anyone a dangerous animal. The devil would be powerless if he couldn't entice people to do his work. So as long as money continues to seduce the hungry, the hopeless, the broken, the greedy, and the needy, there will always be war between brothers."
3
"Whilst you can be a stepping stone to help others succeed, you are not a dirty mat to be abused by others."
3
"Isn't lying supposed to be a 'sin'? Or is it okay to lie when trying to make people you hate look bad?"
3
"Attraction isn't wrong. People can't help who they are drawn to and they certainly can't control affinity, as uncommon as it is. What is wrong is acting on inclination if it hurts someone else, namely a significant other."
3
"So it is the human condition that to wish for the greatness of one's fatherland is to wish evil to one's neighbors. The citizen of the universe would be the man who wishes his country never to be either greater or smaller, richer or poorer."
3
"Ignoring your conscience is the first violation of Truth."
3
"For now, Lady Queen," he said, "allow us to continue to obey you. But give us honorable instructions, Lady Queen," he said, turning a flushed face to hers. "Ask us to do honorable things, so that we may have the honor of obeying you."
3
"Don't do anything that you wouldn't feel comfortable reading about in the newspaper the next day."
3
"I have no doubt that it is a part of the destiny of the human race, in its gradual improvement, to leave off eating animals, as surely as savage tribes have left off eating each other when they came in contact with the more civilized."
3
"I don't want to die. I deserve, certainly, the most extreme punishment society has, and I think society deserves to be protected from me and from others like me. That's the irony. What I'm talking about is going beyond retribution because there is no way in the world that killing me is going to restore those beautiful children to their parents and correct and soothe the pain."
3
"Beastliness means taking that is unrightful [of someone's else right], eating that is unrightful, thinking of accumulating things which is unrightful [not of one's own right]. There is no problem in whatever comes to us rightfully [of which we are worthy of owning it]."
3
"Being vegetarian here also means that we do not consume dairy and egg products, because they are products of the meat industry. If we stop consuming, they will stop producing. Only collective awakening can create enough determination for action."
2
"Ethics are the things that say, 'Don't stick your finger in the socket.' The world says, 'It's okay because we've shut off the electricity.' And at the point that we've chosen to listen to the world and ignore our ethics, we say, 'I'm having a really hard time getting back up."
2
"There's something immoral about abandoning your common sense in matters of social importance."
2
"Ironically, the utterly unselective omnivore -- "I'm easy; I'll eat anything" -- can appear more socially sensitive than the individual who tries to eat in a way that is good for society."
2
"Good philosophy is always hate speech to evil doers."
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