Quotes About Ethics

If a man keeps the law, I know he is a lover of his neighbour. But he is not a lover because he keeps the law: he keeps the law because he is a lover.

She who is even once unjust can not complain if the like is expected of her again.

when the games going against you, stay calm - and cheat.

On the whole human beings want to be good, but not too good, and not quite all the time.

The only good human being is a dead one.

In philosophy, or religion, or ethics, or politics, two and two might make five, but when one was designing a gun or an aeroplane they had to make four.

The consequences of every act are included in the act itself.

It is curious how people take it for granted that they have a right to preach at you and pray over you as soon as your income falls below a certain level.

The mistake you make, don't you see,is in thinking one can live in a corrupt society without being corrupt oneself. After all, what do you achieve by refusing to make money? You're trying to behave as though one could stand right outside our economic system. But one can't. One's got to change the system, or one changes nothing. One can't put things right in a hole-and-corner way, if you take my meaning.

Poverty frees them from ordinary standards of behaviour, just as money frees people from work.

So long as human beings stay human, death and life are the same thing.

I have no wish to take life, not even human life

Those who abjure violence can only do so by others committing violence on their behalf.

And remember also that in fighting against man we must not come to resemble him. Even when you have conquered him, do not adopt his vices.

For some reason, all the best matadors were Fascists.

Many people genuinely do not wish to be saints, and it is possible that some who achieve or aspire to sainthood have never had much temptation to be human beings.

men can only be highly civilized while other men, inevitably less civilized, are there to guard and feed them.

No doubt alcohol, tobacco, and so forth, are things that a saint must avoid; but sainthood is also a thing that human beings must avoid.

Serious sport has nothing to do with fair play. It is bound up with hatred, jealousy, boastfulness, disregard of all rules and sadistic pleasure in witnessing violence. In other words, it is war minus the shooting. (in The Sporting Spirit, Tribune, GB, London, December 1945)

The command of the old despotisms was Thou shalt not. The command of the totalitarians was Thou shalt. Our command is Thou art.

T]he more one is conscious of one's political bias, the more chance one has of acting politically without sacrificing one's aesthetic and intellectual integrity.

All saints should be judged guilty until proven innocent.

It is a strange fact, but it is unquestionably true, that almost any English intellectual would feel more ashamed of standing to attention during God Save the King than stealing from a poor box

Political language -- and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists -- is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.