Quotes About Ethics

I need both of these words, "compassion" and "justice," for compassion without justice easily gets individualized or sentimentalized, and justice without compassion easily sounds like politics.

Our span of life is brief, but is long enough for us to live well and honestly.

Knowledge which is divorced from justice may be called cunning rather than wisdom.

The function of wisdom is to discriminate between good and evil.

Ability without honor is useless.

We are bound by the law, so that we may be free.

Few are those who wish to be endowed with virtue rather than to seem so.

When I notice how carefully arranged his hair is and when I watch him adjusting the parting with one finger, I cannot imagine that this man could conceive of such a wicked thing as to destroy the Roman constitution.

Those wars are unjust which are undertaken without provocation. For only a war waged for revenge or defense can be just.

But I must at the very beginning lay down this principle—friendship can only exist between good men.

Mea mihi conscientia pluris est quam omnium sermo

There is no doubt that a person who is called generous and open-handed has duty in mind, not gain. So likewise justice looks for no prize and no price; it is sought for itself, and is at once the cause and meaning of all the virtues.

Instead let Virtue herself, by her own unaided allurements, summon you to a glory that is genuine and real.

We are all servants of the laws in order to be free

It's not by strength or speed or swiftness of body that great deeds are done, but by wisdom, character, and sober judgment.

Justice looks for no prize and no price; it is sought for itself, and is at once the cause and meaning of all the virtues. . . . The worst kind of injustice is to look for profit from injustice.

Honesty is the best policy

As for you, my young friends, I urge you to strive for virtue, for without it friendship cannot exist. And friendship, aside from virtue, is the greatest thing we can find in life.

An unjust peace is better than a just war.

Men think they may justly do that for which they have a precedent.

We are born for justice, and . . . what is just is based, not on opinion, but on nature.

Marcus Tullius Cicero

My conscience has more weight for me than the opinion of the whole world

a distinction has gradually sprung up between what is expedient and what is right. But the implication that something can be right without being expedient, or expedient without being right, is the most pernicious error that could possibly be introduced into human life.