Quotes About Ethics

Not all the Americans in Iraq are those who torture and murder, or course they're not, I don't know how many are doing it, I know it is systematic throughout the United States military I think that's been revealed.

It makes me actually quite angry to think about people writing about torture with a sort of relish. Horrible.

It is inexcusable for scientists to torture animals; let them make their experiments on journalists and politicians.

In the name of Hippocrates, doctors have invented the most exquisite form of torture ever known to man: survival.

Torture is an impermissible evil. Except under two circumstances. The first is the ticking time bomb. An innocent's life is at stake. The bad guy you have captured possesses information that could save this life. He refuses to divulge. In such a case, the choice is easy.

This is not to condone torture, which is still prohibited by the Torture Convention and federal criminal law.

The Bush administration will go down in history as the Torture Team.

Bradley Manning has been imprisoned without charge, under torture, which is what solitary confinement is.

'24' glamorizes torture. I don't think there's any other way of putting it.

I really believe that if we were from another planet, and we sat down to put our heads together on torture experiments, the concept of sticking a needle into someone and sucking their blood out would probably qualify as a pretty good one.

I don't believe that we should limit waterboarding - or, quite frankly, any other alternative torture technique - if it means saving Americans' lives.

There's been a lot of experience with torture in history. It doesn't work.

Waterboarding isn't torture. We do waterboarding to our own soldiers in the military.

I abhor anything that constitutes torture. Water-boarding, it's perfectly clear to me it is torture. I never supported extraordinary rendition to torture, always said that Guantanamo should be closed. There is no clash of ideals and pragmatism there.

Torture is illegal, both in the U.S. and abroad. So - and that is true for the Bush administration and for any other administration.

In the future, torture will once again become the recreational sport of the rich.

I maintain the importance of an absolute prohibition against torture, while acknowledging that even absolute prohibitions can sometimes be broken. If that is a contradiction, it is a contradiction that ethics has to embrace, or else it becomes like glass: hard, clear, but fatally inflexible.

There is still much debate about whether torture has been effective in eliciting information - the assumption being, apparently, that if it is effective, then it may be justified.

If I had undertaken the practical direction of military operations, and anything went amiss, I feared that my conscience would torture me, as guilty of the fall of my country, as I had not been familiar with military tactics.

There's just no doubt in my mind - under any set of rules - water boarding is torture.

We had a small farm growing up. It was my grandfather's farm, and we didn't torture the animals, and we didn't feed them stuff we wouldn't eat.

We do not need torture as an available instrument of interrogation.

We have a very clear position in the U.K. against torture, and we should maintain that.

America does not torture. We never have, and we never will.