Quotes About Ethics

Pacifism is a tenable position, provided that you are prepared to live with the consequences.

En realidad, nada era ilegal, ya que no existían leyes.

Lo importante no es mantenerse vivo, sino mantenerse humano

But that was merely an intellectual decision, taken because he knew that he ought to take it. He did not feel it.

As a magistrate his methods were simple. Even for the vastest bribe he would never sell the decision of a case, because he knew that a magistrate who gives wrong judgments is caught sooner or later. His practice, a much safer one, was to take bribes from both sides and then decide the case on strictly legal grounds. This won him a useful reputation for impartiality.

There is nothing more dreadful in the world than to live in somebody else's house, eating his bread and doing nothing in return for it.

In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defence of the indefensible. Things like the continuance of British rule in India, the Russian purges and deportations, the dropping of the atom bombs on Japan, can indeed be defended, but only by arguments which are too brutal for most people to face, and which do not square with the professed aims of political parties. Thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness.

let us not pretend that we go into this war with clean hands. It is only while we cling to the consciousness that our hands are not clean that we retain the right to defend ourselves.

Society is wrong somewhere at the root.

To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion for just so long as it is needed, to deny the existence of objective reality and all the while to take account of the reality which one denies—all this is indispensably necessary. Even

There was a direct, intimate connection between chastity and political orthodoxy.

in spite of the men who gripped him by each shoulder, the prisoner stepped slightly aside to avoid a puddle on the path on the way to the gallows. It is curious, but till that moment I had never realized what it means to destroy a healthy, conscious man. When I saw the prisoner step aside to avoid the puddle, I saw the mystery, the unspeakable wrongness, of cutting a life short when it is in full tide. This man was not dying, he was alive just as we were alive.

The real test of character is how you treat someone who has no possibility of doing you any good.

Most people want to be good, but not that good and not all the time.

Kirlilik, oteller ile lokantalar?n özünde vard?r çünkü yiyeceÄŸin temizliÄŸi, dakiklik ve ??kl?k uÄŸruna gözden ç?kar?l?r.

I HAD learned early in my career that one can do wrong against one's will, and before long I also learned that one can do wrong without ever discovering what one has done or why it was wrong. There were sins that were too subtle to be explained, and there were others that

El ataque directo y consciente contra la honradez intelectual procede de los propios intelectuales.

La guerra es la guerra. El único ser humano bueno es el que ha muerto.

We see a man cutting down a tree, and we make sure that he is filling a social need, just because he uses his muscles; it does not occur to us that he may only be cutting down a beautiful tree to make room for a hideous statue.

The Burmese say that when you kill one of these birds they vomit, meaning to say, Look, here is all I possess, and I've taken nothing of yours. Why do you kill me?

All the best matadors were Fascists.

El lenguaje político —y, aunque con variaciones, esto es cierto en el caso de todos los partidos, desde los conservadores hasta los anarquistas— está diseñado para que las mentiras suenen a verdad y los asesinatos parezcan algo respetable; para dar aspecto de solidez a lo que es puro humo.

Alfred Simmonds, Horse Slaughterer and Glue Boiler, Willingdon. Dealer in Hides and Bone-Meal. Kennels Supplied.

No animal shall kill any other animal WITHOUT CAUSE.