Quotes About Ethics

Banking!" Mathis was saying. "What is it but usury? Bankers are money lenders, usurers. But because they lend other people's money or money that does not exist, they have a pretty name. They are still usurers. Once, usury was a mortal sin and an abomination, and to be a usurer was to be a criminal for whom there was a prison cell. To-day the usurers are the gods of the earth and the only mortal sin is to be poor.

The important thing is not who fired the shot but who paid for the bullet.

Il sistema bancario!" stava dicendo Mathis. "Che cos'è, se non usura? I banchieri sono strozzini; usurai. Ma siccome prestano soldi altrui, o soldi che non esistono, hanno un buon nome. Sono comunque usurai. Una volta, l'usura era un peccato mortale e una vergogna, e l'usuraio era un criminale che andava in prigione. Oggi, gli usurai sono gli dèi della terra, e l'unico peccato mortale è la povertà".

Never tell a lie when you can bullshit your way through it

When circumcising an infant child, the circumciser is as far from Jesus' Golden Rule as they can be.

Literature deals with morality but does not necessarily, does not, qua literature, help you to be more moral, either by precept or example. It makes you more aware. Which is to say that it makes you more human by making life more, not less, difficult. When you become more aware, the area of moral choice is widened. You can be a better man; you can also be a worse. Literature will not determine which. It is the equivalent of neither grace nor good works.

That's something I learned in art school. I studied graphic design in Germany, and my professor emphasized the responsibility that designers and illustrators have towards the people they create things for.

I asked Mincha if he would like to be reincarnated as the beautiful scarlet minivet. Mincha paused for a moment and then pointed out how many insects a minivet consumes in its lifetime. "Killing other creatures causes pain in the world. So from a Buddhist perspective, we must say that the minivet is not to be envied." Besides, he related, there are 500 rebirths separating birds and humans, so a bird rebirth would be a big setback from enlightenment. Back

People who think they have the full support of God, any god, think they're invincible. They will do anything and not even think twice about it.

it's pointless to think in moral terms when everything is permissible. We have become the people we detest. We have lost the capacity to imagine what is forbidden We have been freed, in other words, from our own hypocrisy.

Leadership is much like nuclear energy. It is able to warm a whole city or bring it to waste in death and destruction; it's all in how it is used.

The number one, and probably most important,key to consistently doing what's right is actually quite simple-think before you act.

Little value comes out of the belief that people will respond progressively better by treating them progressively worse.

Sports and politics don't mix.

We have rudiments of reverence for the human body, but we consider as nothing the rape of the human mind.

I think that what I'm doing is right. And election-year politics, which intensifies everything, is not going to drive me off that course.

It's a sad indication of where Washington has come, where policy differences almost necessarily become questions of integrity. I came to Washington in the late '70s, and people had the ability in the past to have intense policy differences but didn't feel the need to question the other person's character.

That's what I wanted to say. Ye mustn't think we're over hard on thee. We don't want to be. It's just – well – back of it all, a chap's got to be honest, Joe. And never thee forget that, all thy life, no matter what comes. Ye've got to be honest.

the "etiquette of freedom," to use poet Gary Snyder's phrase. It encompasses small acts like teaching your children to be honest in their dealings with others. It includes serving on community councils and as soccer coaches. It means leaving a place in better shape than you found it. It means helping others during hard times and being able to ask for help. It means resisting the temptation to call a problem someone else's.  

So what stands in place of the Christian message? An ethical and social idealism borne by a faith in progress that - who knows how - claims the right to call itself "Christian." And in the place of the church as the congregation of believers in Christ there stands the church as a social corporation." ~Bonhoeffer

Bonhoeffer's rule never to speak about a brother in his absence. Bonhoeffer knew that living according to what Jesus taught in the Sermon on the Mount was not "natural" for anyone.

He wanted to transmit the same culture of selflessness here that had been practiced in his home as a child. Selfishness, laziness, self-pity, poor sportsmanship, and the like were not tolerated. He made that legacy of his upbringing a part of these seminaries.

Such people neither steal, nor murder, nor commit adultery, but do good according to their abilities. But . . . they must close their eyes and ears to the injustice around them. Only at the cost of self-deception can they keep their private blamelessness clean from the stains of responsible action in the world. In all that they do, what they fail to do will not let them rest. They will either be destroyed by this unrest, or they will become the most hypocritical of all Pharisees.

He differentiated between Christianity as a religion like all the others—which attempt but fail to make an ethical way for man to climb to heaven of his own accord—and following Christ, who demands everything, including our very lives.