Quotes About Ethics

Do you thinking not getting caught in a lie is the same thing as telling the truth?"--Robert Redford from the 1975 movie Three Days of the Condor

While adverse consequences of 100 years from now are obviously less pressing than those of next year, if they are also of large magnitude and irreversible, we cannot in good conscience discount them.

But there is no perfect guide for discerning God's movement in the world, Contrary to what many conservatives say, the Bible is not a blueprint on this matter. It is a valuable symbol for point to God's revelation in Jesus, but it is not self-interpreting. We are thus place in an existential situation of freedom in which the burden is on us to make decisions without a guaranteed ethical guide.

I was simultaneously elated and depressed, a common enough state of mind these days when people are offered a great deal of money to do something repugnant.

If you need a gun to do it with, you aren't doing it right." Sheriff Bud Smith.

If you have to hang a man you could have put on a better trail, you aren't entitled to own a rope.

Never let the law interfere with justice.

If I could put it into a very few words, dear sir, I should say that our prevalent belief is in moderation. We inculcate the virtue of avoiding excesses of all kinds—even including, if you will pardon the paradox, excess of virtue itself.

A kingdom without justice, he memorably observed, was nothing but a very large band of pirates.

Nothing is True, All is Permitted

Manichean dualism is the single worst idea people ever came up with — this notion that you can divide humankind into the children of light and the children of darkness.

one day the world will notice that while E=mc2 ultimately gives you 177,000 dead Japanese civilians, F=ma lets you skate across a frozen lake on a winter's night, the wind caressing your face as you glide toward the hot-chocolate stand on the far shore.

A spirit could not be coerced into corruption, it had to be seduced. It had to participate actively. It had to crave.

are, while your reputation is merely what others think you are.

For to die with honour is far better than to live disgraced.

People can sometimes become too fundamental and dogmatic regarding pharmaceuticals. Yes, pharmaceuticals are largely developed by "Big Pharma" with profit in mind, but the end result is that they often reduce suffering in the world.

No matter what occurs in your life, no matter how bad the circumstances seem to be, you must never consider a dishonorable act as a viable alternative.

CHAP. XIX. The Duke Ai asked, saying, 'What should be done in order to secure the submission of the people?' Confucius replied, 'Advance the upright and set aside the crooked, then the people will submit. Advance the crooked and set aside the upright, then the people will not submit.

You saved whomever you could, whenever you could, regardless of their character or their relationship to you. You used heroic measures even for the least heroic individuals.

It just so happens that the green religion is now taking over from the Christian religion. I don't think people have noticed that, but it's got all the sort of terms that religions use... The greens use guilt. That just shows how religious greens are. You can't win people round by saying they are guilty for putting (carbon dioxide) in the air.

Fudging the data in any way whatsoever is quite literally a sin against the holy ghost of science. I'm not religious, but I put it that way because I feel so strongly. It's the one thing you do not ever do. You've got to have standards.

When we burn fossil fuel for energy we are, in qualitative terms, doing nothing more wrong than burning wood. Our wrongdoing, if that is an appropriate term, is taking energy from Gaia hundreds of times faster than it is naturally made available. We are sinning in a quantitative not a qualitative way.

Characters who engage in murder, sadistic cruelty, malignant selfishness or narcissism, dishonorable and dishonest acts, and obsessions with relative frivolities such as political intrigue and playing the game of thrones transgress against not just individuals but society itself.

Exemplary leaders know that if they want to gain commitment and achieve the highest standards, they must be models of the behavior they expect of others.