top of page
.png){kind=small}
Ethics Quotes
"A ruse. That's all it was. Pretend to like this girl. Pretend to have feelings, to pursue some kind of relationship. Earn her friendship and trust, knowing I might have to destroy it, and her, in the end.It felt wrong. Dirty and underhanded, something they would do. But... I was a soldier, and this was my mission."
1
"There is a certain right by which we many deprive a man of life, but none by which we may deprive him of death; this is mere cruelty."
1
"Who am I, for God's sake, that I should be kind!"
1
"Don't do d right things for the wrong reasons."
1
"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."
1
"Must the citizen ever for a moment, or in the least degree, resign his conscience, then? I think that we should be men first, and subjects afterward. It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right."
1
"Happiness at any price is no happiness at all."
1
"Integrity is the best attire to put on because the without integrity one cannot conceal his nakedness."
1
"Bad is always afraid of good and that is the reason why bad tries to eliminate good!"
1
"I hope I am not for the killing, Anselmo was thinking. I think that after the war there will have to be some great penance done for the killing. If we no longer have religion after the war then I think there must be some form of civic penance organized that all may be cleansed from the killing or else we will never have a true and human basis for living. The killing is necessary, I know, but still the doing of it is very bad for a man and I think that, after all this is over and we have won the war, there must be a penance of some kind for the cleansing of us all."
1
"Is it possible that future generations will regard our present agribuisness and eating practices in much the same way we now view Nero's entertainments or Mengele's experiments? My own initial reaction is that such a comparison is hysterical, extreme - and yet the reason it seems extreme to me appears to be that I believe animals are less morally important than human behings; and when it comes to defending such a belief, even to myself, I have to acknowledge that (a) I have an obvious selfish interest in this belief, since I like to eat certain kinds of animals and want to be able to keep doing it, and (b) I haven't succeeded in working out any sort of personal ethical system in which the belief is truly defensible instead of just selfishly convenient."
1
"Of course, in the process, you must never do harm to others in any serious way, or you'll cease to amuse Him. Then payment comes due for promises you didn't keep."
1
"There is one thing, Emma, which a man can always do if he chooses, and that is his duty; not by manoeuvring and finessing, but by vigour and resolution. - Mr. Knightley."
1
"When wisdom gives way to whimsy and ethics fall to excitement, it is highly likely that the ground beneath me will 'give way' and it is I who will 'fall."
1
"The way we talk and our behavior should reflect positively on God."
1
"Man, do not pride yourself on your superiority to the animals, for they are without sin, while you, with all your greatness, you defile the earth wherever you appear and leave an ignoble trail behind you -- and that is true, alas, for almost every one of us!"
1
"Religion [dharma] is that where there is no irreligion (adharma, immorality). Religion cannot exist where there is irreligion. There can be only one or the other. Behind every intention, there is either [the force of] religion or [the force of] irreligion."
1
"It is different with the upper classes. They, following science, want to base justice on reason alone, but not with Christ, as before, and they have already proclaimed that there is no crime, that there is no sin. And that's consistent, for if you have no God what is the meaning of crime?"
1
"It's the action, not the fruit of the action, that's important. You have to do the right thing. It may not be in your power, may not be in your time, that there'll be any fruit. But that doesn't mean you stop doing the right thing. You may never know what results come from your action. But if you do nothing, there will be no result."
1
"When truth and honesty is absent in the nation, it relates not just to the politicians."
1
"To forgive another person means you have first condemned them. When we condemn others we condemn ourselves."
"If you are a sparrow, don't attack the eagle; be wise! If you are an eagle, don't attack the sparrow; be just!"
"There are no snares more dangerous than those which lurk under the guise of duty or the name of relationship."
"I want to stand on the foundation of ethics and morals when the world around me would assault that foundation with all of its collective might, and in the standing I want to stand on the truth that that foundation will stand long after everything that has assailed it has itself has ceased to stand."
"Treat people as an end, and never as a means to an end."
"The easiest way to forget about the people who are dying in wars right now is to close our eyes and ears! And this is also the ugliest and the vilest way!"
"Seek not the favor of the multitude; it is seldom got by honest and lawful means. But seek the testimony of few; and number not voices, but weigh them."
"Act in such a way that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, never merely as a means to an end, but always at the same time as an end."
"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."
"The higher we are placed, the more humbly we should walk."
"All those who are not straightforward (frank and forthright) in this world are full of deception."
bottom of page