Quotes About Ethics

When people are friends, they have no need of justice, but when they are just, they do need friendship in addition; and in the realm of the just things, the most just seems to be what involves friendship.

For [people] are good18 in one way, but in all kinds of ways bad

baseness that does not possess its own starting point [or principle] is always less harmful than that which does possess it, and intellect is such a starting point. It

Virtue, then, is twofold, intellectual and moral. Both the coming-into-[1103a] being and increase of intellectual virtue result mostly from teaching—hence it requires experience and time—whereas moral virtue is the result of habit, and so it is that moral virtue got its name [?thik?] by a slight alteration of the term habit [ethos].

Neither by nature, therefore, nor contrary to nature are the virtues present; they are instead present in us who are of such a nature as to receive them, and who are completed1 through habit.

Happiness above all seems to be of this character, for we always choose it on account of itself and never on account of something else. Yet honor, pleasure, intellect, and every virtue we choose on their own account—for even if nothing resulted from them, we would choose each of them—but we choose them also for the sake of happiness, because we suppose that, through them, we will be happy.

Could you conjugate that? To sleaze. I sleaze. You sleaze. We all have sleazen.

And this was what bothered him about owning a VCR. If that cowboy was yours for the taking—yours at the flip of a switch—what was to stop you from abandoning human contact altogether? He

All wrong doing is done in the sincere belief that it is the best thing to do

Then the question is, are we worried about the wishes of the patient or about the money involved?

Good men were not to be made merely by laws which relied for their sanction on force but only by religion and morality, which appealed to the conscience. Only when the people, he wrote, had emptied them-selves of all the lust of selfish will—and without religion it was impossible they should—could absolute power be safely entrusted to the State.

The best measure of a man's honesty isn't his income tax return. It's the zero adjust on his bathroom scale.

The greatest tragedy in mankind's entire history may be the hijacking of morality by religion

He was only aware of the conflict that was slowly destroying his integrity—the conflict between truth, and concealment of truth.

Otto would pull the trigger at the slightest provocation and you, Michael, would agonize aver its morality even if your life were threatened. I'm the tiebreaker.

harsh verdict of the great philosopher Lucretius: all religions were fundamentally immoral, because the superstitions they peddled wrought more evil than good.

This would involve disconnection—the computer equivalent of death. Despite

Long ago it had been decided that, however inconsequential rudeness to robots might appear to be, it should be discouraged. All too easily, it could spread to human relationships as well.

Historically, both fear and public opinion were notoriously unconcerned about morality.

could one make up for lack of moral courage by proving physical bravery?

I agree that was terrible—but what could my government do about it?" "A great deal—if it wished. But that would have offended the people who supplied it with oil—and bought its weapons, like the land mines that killed and maimed civilians by the thousands.

Corpse-food was on the way out even in your time," Anderson explained. "Raising animals to—ugh—eat them became economically impossible. I don't know how many acres of land it took to feed one cow, but at least ten humans could survive on the plants it produced. And probably a hundred, with hydroponic techniques.

If humans could not be rid of religion, it was argued, then let them at least not be harmed by it.

For it was their world, not Man's. However he might shape it for his own purposes, it would be his duty always to safeguard the interests of its rightful owners. No one could tell what part they might have to play in the history of the universe. And when, as was one day inevitable, Man himself came to the notice of yet higher races, he might well be judged by his behaviour here on Mars.