Quotes About Ethics

would be easy for any felon to say that his ancestors ought to have been hanged instead of him.

The yoke a man creates for himself by wrong-doing will breed hate in the kindliest nature;

At one time you take pleasure in a sort of perverse self-denial, and at another you have not resolution to resist a thing that you know to be wrong.

Plainness has its peculiar temptations and vices quite as much as beauty;

But why should you regret it more because I am a woman? Perhaps because we need that you should be better than we are. But suppose _we_ need that men should be better than we are, said Gwendolen with a little air of check! That is rather a difficulty, said Deronda, smiling. I suppose I should have said, we each of us think it would be better for the other to be good.

just as when a youthful nobleman steals jewellery we call the act kleptomania, speak of it with a philosophical smile, and never think of his being sent to the house of correction as if he were a ragged boy who had stolen turnips. In

We prepare ourselves for sudden deeds by the reiterated choice of good or evil which gradually determines character.

his father was in the law:—most exemplary and honest nevertheless, which is a reason for our never being rich.

What is your religion?" said Dorothea. "I mean—not what you know about religion, but the belief that helps you most?" "To love what is good and beautiful when I see it," said Will.

The conduct that issues from a moral conflict has often so close resemblance to vice that the distinction escapes all outward judgments founded on a mere comparison of actions. -Book 6, chapter 9

it is astonishing how pleasantly conscience takes our encroachments on those who never complain or have nobody to complain for them.

In those days the world in general was more ignorant of good and evil by forty years than it is at present

Excessive literary production is a social offense.

I think we have no right to come forward and urge wider changes for good, until we have tried to alter the evils which lie under our own hands.

The character of the publican and sinner is not always practically incompatible with that of the modern Pharisee, for the majority of us scarcely see more distinctly the faultiness of our own conduct than the faultiness of our own arguments, or the dullness of our own jokes.

There's Jeremy Taylor's 'Holy Living and Dying' among 'em. I read

Mr. Tulliver was a strictly honest man, and proud of being honest, but he considered that in law the ends of justice could only be achieved by employing a stronger knave to frustrate a weaker. Law was a sort of cock-fight, in which it was the business of injured honesty to get a game bird with the best pluck and the strongest spurs.

It was a question whether gratitude which refers to what is done for one's self ought not to give way to indignation at what is done against another

Perbuatan-perbuatan kita menentukan siapa diri kita sebesar sebagaimana kita menentukan perbuatan-perbuatan kita.

To advocate irrationality is to advocate that which is destructive to human life.

When chemistry has told me that nitric acid thrown in a person's face will cause great agony; when physics has told me that throwing a person out of a window will tend to cause broken bones or death; when economics has told me that promising to keep a person in old age will make him idle and improvident, then, and not till then, can ethics step in and forbid me to commit those actions.

The authentic pragmatist realizes you can't get everything you think is right, but you can get much or most of it through negotiation. The authentic pragmatist sticks to his or her values and works to satisfy them maximally. The inauthentic pragmatist, on the other hand, is willing to depart from his or her true values for the sake of political gain. There

Rewards and punishments are moral acts; giving someone an appropriate reward or punishment balances the moral books.

Competition therefore is moral; it is a condition for the development and sustenance of the right kind of person. Correspondingly, constraints on competition are immoral; they inhibit the development and sustenance of the right kind of person. Even