Quotes About Ethics

Lying is wrong, son, but if it serves a greater good, it's OK.

Ashenden admired goodness, but was not outraged by wickedness," wrote Maugham.

the end, the difference between them is a matter of moral judgment: Gordievsky was on the side of the good; and Ames was on his own side.

you can be unethical and still be legal.

This is no time for morals; it's kill or be killed, and that's all there is to it.

My kinfolks thought more about character than about culture. They said culture could be acquired but character had to be formed. Character had to be hammered into shape like hot iron on an anvil. It had to be molded in the most exact and unrelenting form.

But I quickly learned that, in both the public and private spheres, how you lead is as important as what you know.

some products should just be kept out of the marketplace.

but sometimes it seemed that she put the fund ahead of the interests of the broader financial system.)

that would simultaneously let investors who had misjudged risk off the hook. Richard

How do you draw the line between a healthy, exciting economic boom and a wanton, speculative stock-market bubble driven by the less savory aspects of human nature? As I pointed out drily to the House Banking Committee, the question was all the more complicated because the two can coexist.

persons who claim mystical powers often enjoy remarkably ambidextrous moralities when presented with opportunities for enrichment.

Without a clear moral vision, we devolve into moral relativism, and from there, into oblivion.

No picture should lower the moral standards of those who see it.

In place of moral absolutes, they promote moral relativism and sometimes even question the very existence of truth and reality. To them truth and reality are what we subjectively perceive them to be.

Lasting happiness can only be achieved through cultivation of soul and mind. And cultivating our souls and minds requires us to live with moral purpose.

Don't follow people. Follow principle.

And as for social justice, if social is supposed to be opposed to individual, then social justice is by definition unjust. The

Turning a blind eye to evil, however, doesn't make it disappear. It allows it to grow. And those who allow evil to grow in order to protect their own convenience will be held accountable for the end results of the evil they facilitate.

This is what makes leftists leftists: an unearned sense of moral superiority over you.

Hypocrisy as humor pushes destruction of standards.

What does this mean for human beings? What makes a man virtuous is his capacity to engage in the activities that make him a man, not an animal—man has a telos, too. What is our telos? Our end, according to both Plato and Aristotle, is to reason, judge, and deliberate.

Without God, there is no right and wrong ... Anything goes. Life loses value, and with that loss of value comes a loss of societal strength.

To Aristotle, "good" wasn't a subjective term, something for each of us to define for ourselves; "good" was a statement of objective fact. Something was "good" if it fulfilled its purpose. A good watch tells time; a good dog defends its master. What does a good human being do? Acts in accordance with right reason.