Quotes About Ethics

To teach superstitions as truth is a most terrible thing.

An honest man speaks the truth, though it may give offence; a vain man, in order that it may.

In all debates, let truth be thy aim, not victory, or an unjust interest.

The ethic of truth is the complete opposite of an 'ethics of communication'. It is an ethic of the Real The ethic of truth is absolutely opposed to opinion, and to ethics in general.

She didn't know how Charlie did this on a daily basis. Maintain order. Honestly, it would have been easier just to make a run for it or lay waste to everyone in a five-mile radius. Illegal but easier. Oh, and . . . yeah . . . morally wrong

If you're good at it, and you love it, and it helps you navigate the river of the world, then it can't be wrong.

If people were always kind and obedient to those who are cruel and unjust, the wicked people would have it all their own way.

Just because you can doesn't mean you should.

I learned that, to a trade unionist, strikebreakers—scabs—are the lowest form of human life.

Conservators, in the words of John Kenneth Galbraith, are "engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy, that is the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.

To New York voters, Lehman's courage and honesty shone through. Herbert Lehman, the labor official George Meany wrote, "was the ideal public servant … He had none of the average politician's guile, the average diplomat's evasiveness, the average banker's greed, or the average statesman's aloofness." For Herbert Lehman, life was always about public service.

Don't give a reward for bad behavior.

From the perspective of many ethical vegans, the "What about plants?" question sounds absurd. Does the omnivore really believe in plants' rights? More likely, the vegan assumes, the omnivore is suggesting that granting rights to animals is as ridiculous as granting rights to plants. But perhaps the non-vegan sincerely wants to hear the vegan's answer to this seemingly-rhetorical question.

You overestimate the courage of those in power. They are often more interested in holding on to that power than in doing anything worthwhile with it.

Because being in love does not give you any excuse to be less than honorable, Lady Tremaine.

He did not look like an archangel—if archangels looked as he did, there would be no women of virtue left in Paradise.

Could she live with herself, cowering, while the world burned.

AIBO permits something different: attachment without responsibility.

The way we live now is an experiment in which we are the human subjects—treated as objects by the technology we have created. Our apps use us as much as we use our apps.

Sociable robotics exploits the idea of a robotic body to move people to relate to machines as subjects, as creatures in pain rather than broken objects. That even the most primitive Tamagotchi can inspire these feelings demonstrates that objects cross that line not because of their sophistication but because of the feelings of attachment they evoke.

Winston Churchill said, "We shape our buildings and then they shape us."23 We make our technologies, and they, in turn, shape us. So, of every technology we must ask, Does it serve our human purposes?—a question that causes us to reconsider what these purposes are. Technologies, in every generation, present opportunities to reflect on our values and direction.

The way we contemplate technology on the horizon says much about who we are and who we are willing to become.

Professional life requires that one live with the tension of using technology and remembering to distrust it.

Zane, six, knows that AIBO doesn't have a "real brain and heart," but they are "real enough." AIBO is "kind of alive" because it can function "as if it had a brain and heart.