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Ethics Quotes
"Better a good journalist than a poor assassin."
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"If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion."
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"If principle is good for anything it is worth living up to."
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"Anyone who doesn't take truth seriously in small matters cannot be trusted in large ones either."
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"What we have not chosen we cannot consider either to our merit or our failure."
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"MamA believed in loyalty above all, even at the cost of self-denial. She also believed it was always best to tell the truth, to tell it plainly, without fanfare, and the more disagreeable the truth, the sooner you had to tell it."
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"Every act has both good and evil results. Every act in life yields pairs of opposites in its results. The best we can do is lean toward the light, toward the harmonious relationships that come from compassion with suffering, from understanding the other person."
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"Fight vigorously against the wolves, but on behalf of the sheep, not against the sheep. And this you may do by inveighing against the laws and lawgivers, and yet at the same time observing these laws with the weak, lest they be offended, until they shall themselves recognize the tyranny, and understand their own liberty."
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"Think about it: if someone had found a way to manipulate human choice and free will " if someone actually had that kind of power " wouldn't it be a tad surprising if they then decided to share their secret with the masses in a book for $20? Not to mention how it would be just very slightly unethical."
21
"Unfortunately for the good sense of mankind, the fact of their fallibility is far from carrying the weight in their practical judgement, which is always allowed to it in theory; for while every one well knows himself to be fallible, few think it necessary to take any precautions against their own fallibility."
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"Dogs do not have many advantages over people, but one of them is extremely important: euthanasia is not forbidden by law in their case; animals have the right to a merciful death."
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"The man who loves other countries as much as his own stands on a level with the man who loves other women as much as he loves his own wife."
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"The missing link between humans and apes? It's certainly those brutes who haven't yet learned to respect privacy."
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"We have two kinds of morality side by side: one which we preach but do not practice and the other which we practice but seldom preach."
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"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!"
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"No decent man would ever strike a woman or a child."
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"For this reason the gentleman will employ a man on a distant mission and observe his degree of loyalty, will employ him close at hand and observe his degree of respect. He will hand him troublesome affairs and observe how well he manages them, will suddenly ask his advice and observe how wisely he answers. He will exact some difficult promise from him and see how well he keeps it, turn over funds to him and see with what benevolence he dispenses them, inform him of the danger he is in and note how faithful he is to his duties. He will get him drunk with wine and observe how well he handles himself, place him in mixed company and see what effect beauty has upon him. By applying these nine tests, you may determine who is the unworthy man."
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"The way to be really despicable is to be contemptuous of other people's pain."
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"First, if any opinion is compelled to silence, that opinion may, for aught we can certainly know, be true. To deny this is to assume our own infallibility. Secondly, though the silenced opinion be an error, it may, and very commonly does, contain a portion of the truth; and since the general or prevailing opinion on any subject is rarely or never the whole truth, it is only by the collision of adverse opinions that the remainder of the truth has any chance of being supplied."
20
"I was brought up to be honest; the trouble is it gets me nowhere." Liking her better, he smiled and said, "It'll get us to heaven." "Will it?" "If heaven existed." "Do you not believe in heaven, Mr. Fielding, may I ask?" she said, looking at him shyly. "I do not. Yet I believe that honesty gets us there."
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"There is no honor in seeking praise for doing that which is expected of you."
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"The natural desire of good men is knowledge."
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"What a tragedy, to stand in the middle of your world, watch everything around you fall apart, and realize, your actions precipitated this free fall! Take more time to consider the consequences of your thoughts and actions. One day, you WILL call out for help. Don't let bad judgment disconnect your lifelines."
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"Anyone can possess, anyone can profess, but it is an altogether different thing to confess."
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"No man can live happily who regards himself alone who turns everything to his own advantage. Thou must live for another if thou wishest to live for thyself."
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"She had never been able to tolerate dishonesty, which she thought threatened the very heart of relationships between people. If you could not count on other people to mean what they said, or to do what they said they would do, then life could become utterly unpredictable. The fact that we could trust one another made it possible to undertake the simple tasks of life."
20
"I will tell you what I will do and what I will not do. I will not serve that in which I no longer believe, whether it calls itself my home, my fatherland, or my church: and I will try to express myself in some mode of life or art as freely as I can and as wholly as I can, using for my defense the only arms I allow myself to use -- silence, exile, and cunning."
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"In times like the present, men should utter nothing for which they would not willingly be responsible through time and eternity."
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"Don't make light of any man's pain."
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"She had argued for a broad interpretation, which imposed a duty to answer questions truthfully, and not to hide facts which could give a different complexion to a matter, but on subsequent thought she had revised her position.Although she still believed that one should be frank in answers to questions, this duty arose only where there was an obligation, based on a reasonable expectation, to make a full disclosure. There was no duty to reveal everything in response to a casual question by one who had no right to the information."
20
"The way you make use of your brain, heart, and body, any consequence out of it, has to be faced by you. God or creator never interferes with your action or its consequence. Everything happens out of the process."
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"He says in his defence he never meddled with married women, only with virgins."
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"An ignorant man, who is not fool enough to meddle with his clock, is however sufficiently confident to think he can safely take to pieces, and put together at his pleasure, a moral machine of another guise, importance and complexity, composed of far other wheels, and springs, and balances, and counteracting and co-operating powers. Men little think how immorally they act in rashly meddling with what they do not understand. Their delusive good intention is no sort of excuse for their presumption. They who truly mean well must be fearful of acting ill."
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"Don't take it personal. Whether people like or dislike you, it most probably is because of your beliefs, principles, and values..."
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"The way to procure insults is to submit to them. A man meets with no more respect than he exacts."
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"Choices may be unbelievably hard but they're never impossible. To say you have no choice is to release yourself from responsibility and that's not how a person with integrity acts."
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"Rape is a more heinous crime than murder since the rape victim dies throughout the period she lives."
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"Human rights' are a fine thing, but how can we make ourselves sure that our rights do not expand at the expense of the rights of others. A society with unlimited rights is incapable of standing to adversity. If we do not wish to be ruled by a coercive authority, then each of us must rein himself in...A stable society is achieved not by balancing opposing forces but by conscious self-limitation: by the principle that we are always duty-bound to defer to the sense of moral justice."
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