Quotes About Ethics

Whenever any American's life is taken by another American unnecessarily—whether it is done in the name of the law or in the defiance of law, by one man or a gang, in cold blood or in passion, in an attack of violence or in response to violence—whenever we tear at the fabric of life which another man has painfully and clumsily woven for himself and his children, the whole nation is degraded.

Religion ist nichts anderes als die Lehre davon, wie man frei von Erkenntnis gehorcht [...].

Das Recht ist kein Kreißsaal für die Gerechtigkeit und hat niemals behauptet, einer zu sein. Das Recht besteht aus Gesetzen, Gesetze bestehen aus Wörtern, und Wörter können manches sein, sicher aber nicht gerecht.

D]ie spezielle Müdigkeit, die jeden befällt, der sich anhören muss, was gut und böse, richtig und falsch sei, obwohl niemand mehr die Grundlagen dieser Unterscheidung zu erklären oder auch nur zu benennen vermag. Moral dient der Herbeiführung von Berechenbarkeit.

een maatschappij waarin het er alleen nog om ging om tijdens de grote uitverkoop van waarden en normen de eigen schaapjes op het droge te krijgen.

Es gibt Gebiete des Denkens, die man nicht ungestraft betritt. Kopfschmerzen und ein schlechter Charakter sind der Mindestpreis.

Nach dem demokratischen Verständnis muss der Maßstab jeder Aburteilung abstrakt sein. Das folgt aus dem Verbot von Einzelfallgesetzen. [...] Wozu sollte das Abstrakte uns dienen, wenn nicht als Maßstab für Aburteilungen?

Es [gibt] vielleicht pragmatische Urteile, nicht aber pragmatische Gerechtigkeit.

Seiner Erfahrung nach wurden die schlimmsten Übel auf der Welt nicht durch böse Menschen bewirkt. Von denen gab es in Wahrheit erstaunlich wenige. Viel gefährlicher waren Leute, die sich im Recht glaubten. Sie waren ungeheuer zahlreich, und sie kannten keine Gnade.

ancient variety of views on ethics and on knowledge – how we can come to engage with the ancients in a respectful but critical way, both disagreeing with them and learning from them.

the second half of the fifth century, intellectuals called sophists developed some philosophical skills, particularly in argument, and philosophical interests, particularly in ethical and social thought. The best known are Protagoras, Hippias, Gorgias and Prodicus.

We always learn to be virtuous in a given context; there is no such thing as just learning to be generous or loyal in the abstract.

One school of ancient philosophers, the Stoics, developed a distinctive view of Medea as part of their ethics and psychology. They think that the idea that there are really two distinct forces or motives at work in Medea is an illusion. What matters in this situation is always Medea herself, the person, and it is wrong to think in terms of different parts of her.

The Stoics think that there are no parts or divisions to the human soul, and that it is all rational. (By the soul they mean the item that makes humans live in a characteristically human way.) Emotions are not blind, non-rational forces which can overcome rational resolve; they are themselves a kind of reason which the person determines to act on.

A virtue is a disposition which is central to the person, to whom he or she is, a way we standardly think of character.

As parents and teachers know well, we teach children to be fair and honest not by teaching them what they should do and then trying to interest them in having a new motivation to do this. Rather, we try to educate and fowl motivations that are present already.

That is why it would be grotesque to have posters in elementary schools depicting Donald Trump as a hero for the young, rather than people like King, Gandhi, and Mandela.14

any breaches

Foreign visitors who concerned themselves with the plight of the Jews – and the majority did not – had to deal with an unanswerable question. How was it possible for these warm-hearted, genial people, noted for their work ethic and devotion to family values, to treat so many of their fellow Germans with such contempt and cruelty?

It was in the spring of 1939 that Hitler finally set in motion a "racial hygiene" policy that he had wanted to pursue for many years, namely the systematic killing of those who were mentally or physically disabled. He made his intentions clear in an address to the Nuremberg Rally tenyears earlier when he had argued that if of the million or so children born each year in Germany 70,000 to 80,000 of the weakest were removed, the nation would be made correspondingly stronger.

Once the means to kill children had been established, it was only a matter of months before the programme was extended to include adults living in asylums or other such institutions.

The problem immediately facing [the "Charitable Foundation for Cure and Institutional Care" in Berlin] staff was how to kill large groups of German adults swiftly without arousing public suspicion. The starvation method hitherto used for children was considered too slow and likely to attract too many questions.

Utilitarianism holds that an action, or a law, is right only if it produces the best outcome – only if it brings about the "greatest good for the greatest number.

Hay momentos en la vida es los que la única manera de salvarse a uno mismo es muriendo o matando