Quotes About Ethics

I want it said of me by those who knew me best, that I always plucked a thistle and planted a flower where I thought a flower would grow.

If my survival caused another to perish, then death would be sweeter and more beloved.

I would never impose my own personal convictions upon the law.

If a politician found he had cannibals among his constituents, he would promise them missionaries for dinner.

We must have constantly present in our minds the difference between independence and liberty. Liberty is a right of doing whatever the laws permit, and if a citizen could do what they forbid he would no longer be possessed of liberty.

He who would be no slave must consent to have no slave. Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves and, under a just God, cannot long retain it.

Ought we not to ask the media to agree among themselves a voluntary code of conduct, under which they would not say or show anything which could assist the terrorists' morale or their cause while the hijack lasted.

Better to die ten thousand deaths than wound my honor.

I almost became a political journalist, having worked as a reporter at the time of Watergate. The proximity to those events motivated me, when I wound up doing philosophy, to try to use it to move the public debate.

But I wound like people to think I was an honest judge and a good judge. And I always tried the reach the best result in every case.

People now live their lives like an open wound to be famous - they do bad things because they're rewarded for it.

At one point, I had over 800 employees, and I always paid all health care for my people - including a man who was my assistant who got HIV. I wound up paying his medical bills, which went into the hundreds of thousands. I'm not making myself out to be a saint. I did the right thing.

If we could establish a deep abiding relationship with nature, we would never kill an animal for our appetite; we would never harm, vivisect, a monkey, a dog, a guinea pig for our benefit. We would find other ways to heal our wounds, heal our bodies.

Cloning, wow. Who would have thought? There should be a list of people who can and cannot clone themselves.

I call being vegetarian the 'Wow Rao' diet. Wow because I know that being vegetarian is the best thing I can do for myself, the animals and the environment.

I'm simply saying that heroes are people whose activities, whose attitudes, and whose judgment you just think, 'Wow. That's good. That's right. That's real.'

A newspaper that you're not reading can be used for anything; and the same people didn't think it was immoral to wrap their garbage in newspaper.

Sometimes I can tackle an issue -homelessness, tobacco litigation, insurance fraud, the death penalty - and wrap a good story around it. These are the best books, the ones with a story and a message.

So many tech companies have embraced a mission that they say is larger than profits. Once you wrap yourself up in a moral flag, you have to carry it to the top of other hills.

To be interested in the public good we must be disinterested, that is, not interested in goods in which our personal selves are wrapped up.

I don't get wrapped up in the politics of going down to win a penalty or getting an opponent sent off.

We all buy our meat wrapped in plastic because we don't like to think about the animal that died.

My thing is every generation of Americans has to answer what we call the 'Superman Question.' Superman comes, lands in America. He's illegal. He's one of these kids. He's wrapped up in a red bullfighter's cape. And you've got to decide what we're gonna do with Superman.

The holy land was supposed to be spotless, a serious equivalent of Disneyland in which not a single candy wrapper is to stay on the ground for more than a few minutes.