Quotes About Ethics

It is a clear truth that those who every day barter away other men's liberty will soon care little for their own.

We cannot do whatever we please and remain lawyers or yogis-and yet we could not be either unless we pleased.

Rules are not valid because the senate passed them, or because heroes once played by them, or because God pronounced them through Moses or Muhammad. They are valid only if and when players freely play by them.

Not everyone who uses machinery is a killer. But when the use of machinery springs from our attempt to respond to the indifference of nature with an indifference of our own to nature, we have begun to acquire the very indifference to persons that has led to the century's grandest crimes by its most civilized nations.

All we have left, when all is said and done, is the content of our character and our most cherished relationships.

I've often been asked, "What's the payoff for having integrity?" My answer is simple. If you live with integrity, I promise you'll be a happier person and live a more satisfying life. You will have a level of clarity, resolve, and confidence that sets you apart from the crowd.

I won't be wronged, I won't be insulted, and I won't be laid a hand on. I don't do these things to other people and I require the same from them." JOHN WAYNE in his last film, The Shootist (1976)

We all need a solid belief system, a moral compass, to guide us when temptations crop up or peer pressure goes against what we know in our hearts is right.

For them, the Golden Rule was not something learned in Sunday school. The principle of "do unto others what you would have them do unto you" was nothing more and nothing less than a key to survival.

To the cowboy, true integrity means listening to that inner voice that tells you the difference between right and wrong, so that your actions line up with your beliefs. And isn't that as good a definition of integrity as you can find?

There is more to courage than jumping into a river to save someone's life. It is also being willing to speak up and say that something isn't right ~ even if that means going up against what others may believe.

Do we fulfill our obligations by being practical all the time?

Mankind's moral sense is not a strong beacon light, radiating outward to illuminate in sharp outline all that it touches. It is, rather, a small candle flame, casting vague and multiple shadows, flickering and sputtering in the strong winds of power and passion, greed and ideology. But brought close to the heart and cupped in one's hands, it dispels the darkness and warms the soul.

If the moral senses can conflict with one another and with what prudent action requires under particular circumstances, then living a good life requires striking a delicate balance among those senses and between them and prudent self-interest.

Self interest feeds more people than self sacrifice.

They were doing what they thought they had to do. Their intentions were as good as those of most political and religious purists. In the time of Julius Caesar, Brutus was known as the most moral man in Rome. Whenever we think of what he did and of what then became of him, we are reminded that unduly virtuous men can be as great a danger to themselves and their own causes as they are to their adversaries.

A psychological explanation of our feelings is not a moral explanation of our conduct.

When we decide what to do, we in effect proclaim our wish that our conduct be made into a "universal law." Therefore when a rational being decides to treat people in a certain way he decrees that in his judgement, this is the way people ought to be treated. Thus if we treat him the same way in return we are doing nothing more than treating him as he has decided people are to be treated.

Moral Skepticism is the idea that there is no such thing as objective moral truth.

culturas diferentes tienen códigos morales diferentes.

Si suponemos que nuestras ideas éticas serán compartidas por todos los pueblos y en todas las épocas, somos simplemente ingenuos.

No hay razón para pensar que si el mundo es redondo todos deben saberlo. De igual manera, no hay razón para pensar que si hay verdades morales todos deben conocerlas.

El error fundamental en el argumento de las diferencias culturales es que trata de sacar una conclusión sustantiva acerca de un tema del mero hecho de que hay un desacuerdo acerca de él.

En particular, ningún tipo de actividad debía prohibirse a menos que, al realizar tal actividad, se esté dañando a otros.