Quotes About Ethics

This is why it's so comfortable to be on the left: that unearned sense of moral superiority. Unearned,

individual purpose lay in acting virtuously—fulfilling our telos by pursuing right reason in accordance with nature. Virtue, in turn, could only be defined with reference to the community. The individual, in this view, tends to disappear into the community.

Professors make "profit" into a curse word. If something is bad, it must be because people are doing it purely for profit. Providing a service is only worthy if it is done altruistically. Professors ignore the fact that man is a reward-driven being and that profit is the surest incentive for hard work.

What, then, of communal capacity? The community was tasked with two separate functions: instilling virtue in the citizenry, and protecting the citizens from the violation of natural law.

The Athenian system of thought establishes certain fundamental notions crucial to happiness: the notion of telos, discoverable by us; the importance of reason-led investigation, leading to the birth of science; the recognition that social ties bind us to one another.

If you want to fight the evil you see in finance and industry, get to work reading the corporate filings, see if there has been fraud, and where you find it, report it to the SEC or write about it or blog about it.

It's really amazing that in the age of unbelief, as a smart man called it, there isn't even more fraud. After all, with no God, there's no one to ever call you to account, and no accounting at all if you can get away with it.

The people who did the collateralized mortgage obligations, sold them to pension funds, then sold them short, then bought credit default swap insurance on them, are just amazing. They are a law unto themselves.

C. H. Dodd puts it this way: "To over-spiritualize religion is to weaken it ethically. ,286

It required an understanding of theology, and ethics, and ancient religions and philosophies. You had to have a working knowledge in a plethora of fields just to have the background to be able to deal with a book as rich and complex as the Bible.

I was brought up to believe that human beings are good, which is why it shocks me to the core when I see human beings behaving badly.

Economy is the aestethic of practical life - morality is its logic

L'onestà politica non è altro che la capacità politica.

Happiness is not the reward of virtue, but is virtue itself; nor do we delight in happiness because we restrain from our lusts; but on the contrary, because we delight in it, therefore we are able to restrain them.

Benevolentia nihil aliud est, quam cupiditas ex commiseratione orta.

There is a violence that liberates, and a violence that enslaves; there is a violence that is moral and a violence that is immoral

Liberty is a duty, not a right

La moral política es como una capa con tantos remiendos, que no se sabe ya cuál es el paño primitivo.

I say that justice is truth in action.

Evil communication corrupts good manners. I hope to live to hear that good communication corrects bad manners.

Sabéis su definición de un embajador? «Un caballero honrado enviado al extranjero a mentir

No creo que nadie sea bueno o malo del todo. Somos una mezcla y actuamos de acuerdo a las circunstancias en que nos encontramos.

para comer con el demonio hace falta una cuchara muy larga.

Corporations are not in business to be social-welfare organizations they are there to make money.