Quotes About Ethics

You have very little right to break the rules, until you have mastered them.

TELL THE TRUTH—OR, AT LEAST, DON'T LIE

You don't get to leap from being a 17 year old naughthead who doesn't know anything and who isn't disciplined to the critic of Judeo-Christian society. Especially when you can look at your own life and think about how many things you are doing you know are wrong and you could fix that you aren't fixing.

Matthew 25:29), derived from what might be the harshest statement ever attributed to Christ: "to those who have everything, more will be given; from those who have nothing, everything will be taken.

the harshest statement ever attributed to Christ: "to those who have everything, more will be given; from those who have nothing, everything will be taken.

respect for the rules, except when following those rules means disregarding or ignoring or remaining blind to an even higher moral principle

Now, power may accompany authority, and perhaps it must. However, and more important, genuine authority constrains the arbitrary exercise of power.

rationality is subject to the single worst temptation--to raise what it knows now to the status of an absolute.

Cultivating judgment about the difference between virtue and vice is the beginning of wisdom, something that can never be out of date. By contrast, our modern relativism

And, since we don't know right from wrong, or what is good, just about the most inappropriate thing an adult can do is give a young person advice about how to live.

the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being.

Perhaps you will then see that if all people did this, in their own lives, the world might stop being an evil place. After that, with continued effort, perhaps it could even stop being a tragic place. Who knows what existence might be like if we all decided to strive for the best? Who knows what eternal heavens might be established by our spirits, purified by truth, aiming skyward, right here on the fallen Earth? Set your house in perfect order before you criticize the world.

Naive, harmless people usually guide their perceptions and actions with a few simple axioms: people are basically good; no one really wants to hurt anyone else; the threat (and, certainly, the use) of force, physical or otherwise, is wrong.

Leave aside that telling people you're virtuous isn't a virtue, it's self-promotion. Virtue signalling is not virtue. Virtue signalling is, quite possibly, our commonest vice.)

Without careful attention, culture itself tilts toward corruption.

What shall I do when greed consumes me? Remember that it is truly better to give than to receive.

Part of moving Beyond Order is knowing when you have such a reason. Part of moving Beyond Order is understanding that your conscience has a primary claim on your action, which supersedes your conventional social duty.

What shall I do to strengthen my spirit? Do not tell lies, or do what you despise.

If you are a CEO, for example, and you suspect that your treasurer is cooking the books, and you do not investigate because you do not want to know, you may still be liable for your inaction—as is appropriate.

that morality is relative, at best a personal "value judgment." Relative means that there is no absolute right or wrong in anything;

Tan solo el ser humano podía concebir el potro de torturas, la doncella de hierro y el aplastapulgares. Tan solo el ser humano hará sufrir únicamente por el gusto de hacer sufrir. Esta es la mejor definición del mal que he sido capaz de formular. Los animales son incapaces de hacer algo así, pero los humanos, con sus atroces capacidades de semidioses, sí que pueden.

He observed that the virtues always aim for balance and avoid the extremes of the vices.

What might serve as a more sophisticated alternative to happiness? Imagine it is living in accordance with the sense of responsibility, because that sets things right in the future.

There is another fundamental problem, too, with the life-lie, particularly when it is based on avoidance. A sin of commission occurs when you do something you know to be wrong. A sin of omission occurs when you let something bad happen when you could do something to stop it. The former is regarded, classically, as more serious than the latter—than avoidance. I'm not so sure.