Quotes About Ethics

Marcus Tullius Cicero

O vitae Philosophia dux! O virtutum indagatrix expultrixque vitiorum! Unus dies, bene et ex praeceptis tuis actus, peccanti immortalitati est anteponendus.

These people who govern us should not be so carried away by their own political power that they turn away from peace, but neither should they embrace a peace that is dishonorable.

In Cicero's time the left and the right wing in ethical philosophy were represented by the Epicureans and the Stoics respectively, while the Peripatetics held a middle ground.

It is the function of justice not to do wrong to one's fellow-men; of considerateness , not to wound their feelings; and in this the essence of propriety is best seen.

its underlying principles are in such close harmony with the absolute and eternal right that they can never become obsolete. At the same time, the division and arrangement of the treatise give it, so far as I know, the precedence over all other ethical treatises ancient or modern.

The extreme of right is the extreme of wrong.

Gut ist, was den Guten gefällt.

for my own part I cannot cordially approve, I merely tolerate, a philosopher who talks of setting bounds to the desires. Is it possible for desire to be kept within bounds? It ought to be destroyed, uprooted altogether.

nothing is generous that is not at the same time just.

Justice is the mistress and queen of all the virtues.

Denn wirklich tugendhaft wollen nicht so Viele sein als scheinen.

ait enim declinare atomum sine causa; quo nihil turpius physico, quam fieri quicquam sine causa dicere, — et

We may, I think, give the name of perfect duty to the absolute right, which the Greeks term ?????????;1 while contingent duty is what they call ????????.2 According to their definitions, what is right in itself is perfect duty; that for the doing of which a satisfactory reason can be given is a contingent

Nimium boni est, cui nihil est mali.

If we were all on trial for our thoughts, we would all be hanged.

Why is it he feels some line has been crossed, some boundary transgressed? How much is too much, how far is too far?

Extreme good, extreme evil: the abilities required are similar.

I could end this with a moral, as if this were a fable about animals, though no fables are really about animals.

The newspaper journalists like to believe the worst; they can sell more papers that way, as one of them told me himself; for even upstanding and respectable people dearly love to read ill of others.

How easy it is to invent a humanity, for anyone at all. What an available temptation.

Your friend is intellectually honourable, Jimmy's mother would say. He doesn't lie to himself.

But sins must not be overlooked simply because the sinner is skilled.

If you do bad things for reasons you've been told are good, does it make you a bad person?