Quotes About Ethics

Catherine [of Siena] compares justice combined with mercy with a precious pearl. Justice without mercy would be dark, cruel, more like injustice than justice. But mercy without justice would be like salve on a sore which should be cleansed with the red-hot iron; if the salve is applied before the wound is cleansed it only makes it smart, and does not heal it

I never thought, she went on, that it would be so easy for me to lie. But what must be done can be done.

Mamaw says this is the problem with a lot of politicians. "They want to do right, but they're too scared to," she says.

The Roman people paid great attention to the rightness of their wars in the building of the empire. 'When the inception of war seems just,' ran the logic, 'it makes victory greater and ill success less perilous, while if it is thought to be dishonourable and wrong, it has the opposite effect'.

It is one thing to be the common-or-garden villain who says, I don't care if I have wronged you by breaking my word or stealing your goods. But it is another to achieve the rather extraordinary pitch of villainy, which says, I don't even recognize that you have a complaint. A society in which people are incapable of recognizing others as having a complaint, whatever they do, would be one without an ethic - but for that very reason, it would be hard to recognize it as a society at all.

seperate morality from its effects, and you will see that everyone regards ias a nuisance, an annoying brake on their freedom of action.

An ethic gone wrong is an essential preliminary to the sweat-shop or the concentration camp and the death march.

El suicidio, bajo mi punto de vista, no constituye un crimen legal ni moral, y nadie debería considerarlo como tal.

To utter a word and meaning nothing by it is unworthy of a philosopher. Berkeley

You don't have to be guilty of anything in order to feel guilt

As I left the Dayaks I felt torn. They had been endlessly welcoming to me, but they were also openly admitting involvement in, and responsibility for, mass killing. It reinforced what I had found during the previous decade, when I had been investigating terrorism, arms smuggling and organised crime, which was that situations are rarely clear-cut, hardly ever black and white, and good people can do bad things, while bad people can definitely do good. Humans are just so damn complicated.

What is the value of being a criminal investigator in a state run by criminals ?

spare me your delight in the greater misfortune of others.' He paused, as a thought struck him. 'There really ought to be a word for that quality since so many people seem to relish the misfortune of others.' Cato cleared his throat.

Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon were guilty of unjustified wiretaps, and President John F. Kennedy conducted dubious wiretaps in the first month of his presidency.

judges in seventeenth-century France were discouraged from socializing on the grounds that friends and acquaintances might one day be called before the court.

I told Ron to take my name off the paper," recalls Adleman. "I told him that it was his invention, not mine. But Ron refused and we got into a discussion about it.

Podían los muchachos ser culpados por los pecados de sus progenitores? Ciertamente no eran ellos los responsables

Arthur said: "A superman has asked a subhuman to do something which is superhuman. If you had forgiven him, you would never have forgiven yourself all your life.

La restitución moral es más fuerte que la restitución material

Los nazis consideraban la eutanasia como una clase de ejecución casi ética y la reservaban para miembros de su propia raza

Si un estudiante no se desmoronaba cuando tenía que matar a los suyos, no tendría escrúpulo moral para exterminar miles de Untermenschen. El estudiante que no lo resistía, era enviado al frente, donde sus superiores lo destinaban a un Himmetfahrtskommando, escuadrón suicida

No hay libertad sin justicia

To forgive without justice is a self-satisfying weakness. Justice without love is simulation of strength.

how humankind will ever be able to answer to God for the wounds inflicted on His world.