Quotes About Morality

She had chosen Dante because she found the rhyme scheme pleasingly jaunty, but she realized too late that the Inferno's tale of sinners being cruelly punished in the afterlife was much too bloody and disturbing to be suitable for young minds. Penelope could tell this by the way the children hung on her every word and demanded "More, more!" each time she reached the end of a canto and tried to stop.

While there is no one who hasn't an evil bone in their body, there is also no one who is totally evil to the core. the fact that someone harbors opposing emotions simply makes them human.

A sense of righteousness is even more dangerous than a violent temper.

Self-righteousness is the most shameless slut of all.

Art seduces, but does not exploit.

The problem nowadays is that, by and large, we do a pretty bad job of picking role models. We glorify actors, singers, athletes, and generic "celebrities," only to be disappointed when—predictably—it turns out that their excellence at reciting, singing, playing basketball, or racking up Facebook likes and Twitter followers has pretty much nothing to do with their moral fiber.

Epicureans, from the beginning, rejected idealisms and absolutes that divorced people from context and from nature, and chose to engage reality instead. Our morality is contextual. Rather than hand down absolute dos and don'ts, the first Epicureans elaborated methods by which we can most effectively use our faculties.

The thought is that Hitler is an unfortunate node in the way the world is unfolding. He did not choose to be the evil person he is. He deserves compassion, not anger. And he must die for reasons of compassion: compassion for him and all those who might suffer his awfulness.

Ética» deriva del griego êthos, una palabra relacionada con nuestra idea de carácter; «moralidad» procede del latín moralis, que tenía que ver con hábitos y costumbres.

Mientras que la ética moderna se ocupa principalmente de si las acciones son correctas o no, los filósofos premodernos concebían la ética como una investigación mucho más amplia sobre cómo vivir una vida feliz, cuya consecución consideraban la empresa más importante del ser humano.

Nothing can be traded if the price is compromising of your character.

The fact that our qualities are relational has ethical implications. Since there is no "me" that is completely independent of my relationships, I live well to the extent that I do a good job at my relationships.

Pero las habrían confinado a la categoría de «indiferentes preferidos»: cosas que puedes tener y cultivar, mientras no afecten a tus virtudes y tu integridad moral.

For Aristotle, then, the idea of the flourishing life cannot be disentangled from that of the balanced one, and the person who pursues moral virtue at the expense of all else—who views moral considerations as always overriding of all others—is by definition one whose life is unbalanced.

foundation of morality is to ... give up pretending to believe that or which there is no evidence, and repeating unintelligible propositions about this beyond the possibilities of knowledge." So wrote Thomas Henry Huxley, who thought-in the tradition of writers and philosophers like David Hume and Thomas Paine-that we have a moral duty to distinguish sense from nonsense.

All choices and avoidances are relative to concrete circumstances. The answer to moral questions is always: carry out hedonic calculus. Measure the advantages versus the disadvantages. Since a pleasant life is the goal, we must avoid or defer instant gratification if it carries disadvantages greater than the pleasure it brings. We therefore sometimes choose disadvantages in the hopes of a greater, longer-term pleasure.

It is also about keeping in mind what is and what is not under our control, focusing our efforts on the former and not wasting them on the latter. It is about practicing virtue and excellence and navigating the world to the best of our abilities, while being mindful of the moral dimension of all our actions.

There are two crucial ideas underlying Stoicism, and they each correspond to one major promise the philosophy holds for its practitioners. The first crucial idea is that life is fundamentally about being a morally good person, which is achieved through the continuous practice of four cardinal virtues. The second idea is the so-called dichotomy of control, the notion that some things are "up to us," as the Stoics say, and other things are not.

To a Stoic, it ultimately does not matter if we think the Logos is God or Nature, as long as we recognize that a decent human life is about the cultivation of one's character and concern for other people (and even for Nature itself) and is best enjoyed by way of a proper—but not fanatical—detachment from mere worldly goods.

Para decidir cuál es la mejor forma de vivir (ética), hay que entender cómo funciona el mundo (física) y razonar adecuadamente sobre ello (lógica).

In contrast, Confucians hold that we should show compassion to all human beings, but we have special obligations to certain individuals because of the specific relationships we have with them, relationships that make us who we are—family, community, and friendship. So part of the justification for differentiated care is the special debts we acquire through the relationships that help define us.

The way the Stoics put all of this into practice is by means of the four cardinal virtues: practical wisdom, the ability to navigate complex situations, especially morally salient ones, in the best way possible; courage, of the moral kind, as in the courage to stand up and do the right thing; justice, meaning treating others as worthy of the respect and dignity that comes with being fellow humans; and temperance, responding to situations in just measure, without excess or defect.

The way to overcome fear is simply to do what is right.

La hermosura, señora Clara —le dije con voz áspera—, debe ir acompañada de la virtud para ser hermosura valedera pues, de otro modo, sólo es buena apariencia y como tal, fácil de perder.