Quotes About Morality

Ethics is knowing the difference between what you have the right to do and what is the right thing to do. - Potter Stewart

That's the thing you learn about values: they're what people make up to justify what they did.

Every uniform corrupts one's character.

If anyone has a conscience it's generally a guilty one.

Die Bild-Zeitung ist ein Organ der Niedertracht. Es ist falsch, sie zu lesen. Jemand, der zu dieser Zeitung beiträgt, ist gesellschaftlich absolut inakzeptabel. Es wäre verfehlt, zu einem ihrer Redakteure freundlich oder auch nur höflich zu sein. Man muss so unfreundlich zu ihnen sein, wie es das Gesetz gerade noch zuläßt. Es sind schlechte Menschen, die Falsches tun

All men who participate in wars find themselves obliged to do things which, if they are decent people, they afterwards regret.

Some Americans responded brutally to such docility: in two separate incidents on 14 July, an officer and an NCO of the U.S. 45th Division murdered large groups of Italians in cold blood. One, Sgt. Horace West, who killed thirty-seven with a Thompson submachine gun, was convicted by a court-martial, but later granted clemency. The other, Capt. John Compton, assembled a firing squad which massacred thirty-six Italian prisoners.

Horace Walpole wrote in the mid-eighteenth century: 'No great country was ever saved by good men, because good men will not go to the lengths that may be necessary.

The French were more tolerant of brothels than any other nation in Europe, though there was some dispute about whether this reflected enlightenment or depravity.

It seems a fair test of any political movement to enquire not whether it is capitalist, communist or fascist, but whether it is fundamentally humane.

Nuestra misión actual es, antes bien, asegurar que en el futuro no vuelva a perderse la capacidad para la teoría y para la acción que nace de esta [...] Debemos luchar para que la humanidad no quede desmoralizada para siempre por los terribles acontecimientos del presente, para que la fe en un futuro feliz de la sociedad, en un futuro de paz y digno del hombre, no desaparezca de la tierra.

Do not confuse your vested interests with ethics. Do not identify the enemies of your privilege with the enemies of humanity.

When you choose the lesser of two evils, always remember that it is still an evil.

We cannot live by power, and a culture that seeks to live by it becomes brutal and sterile. But we can die without it.

The highest court is in the end one's own conscience and conviction—that goes for you and for Einstein and every other physicist—and before any science there is first of all belief.

Antiquity believed that the forces of love in the universe were limited. Therefore they were to be used sparingly,and everyone was to be loved only according to his value.

Is not all the stupid chatter of most of our newspapers the babble of fools who suffer from the fixed idea of morality, legality, christianity and so forth, and only seem to go about free because the madhouse in which they walk takes in so broad a space?

The web of hypocrisy of today hangs on the frontiers of two domains, between which our time swings back and forth, attaching its fine threads of deception and self-deception. No longer vigorous enough to serve morality without doubt or weakening, not yet reckless enough to live wholly to egoism, it trembles now toward the one and now toward the other in the spider-web of hypocrisy, and, crippled by the curse of halfness, catches only miserable, stupid flies.

Our athiests are pious people.

Der moralische Einfluß nimmt da seinen Anfang, wo die Demütigung beginnt, ja er ist nichts anderes, als diese Demütigung selbst, die Brechung und Beugung des Mutes zur Demut herab.

Moral influence takes its start where humiliation begins; yes, it is nothing else than this humiliation itself, the breaking and bending of the temper down to humility.

Aus fixen Ideen entstehen die Verbrechen.

After industry and frugality, nothing contributes more to the raising of a young man in the world than punctuality and justice in all his dealings;

Política como vocación). Los funcionarios con un alto sentido ético, tales como los que desgraciadamente han ocupado entre nosotros una y otra vez cargos directivos, son precisamente malos políticos, irresponsables en sentido político y por tanto desde este punto de vista, éticamente detestables.