Quotes About Ethics

Selling out is doing something you don't really want to do for money. That's what selling out is.

Essentially, I'm a very real person; good and bad. And the public image is one of being very good, I suppose. But one of the reasons I'm attracted to people like Martin Luther King, Jr., Gandhi, Christ, to pacifism, is because naturally, I'm the guy that would not turn the other cheek - but, when people see you're attracted to that, they think you are that.

I do see the good in people, but I also see the bad --- I see it in myself. I know what I'm capable of. Good and bad. It's very imnportant that we make that clear. Just because I often find a way around the darkness doesn't mean tjat I don't know it's there. (Bono)

And I can't tell the difference between ABC News, Hill Street Blues And a preacher on the old time gospel hour Stealing money from the sick and the old Well the God I believe in isn't short of cash, mister!

What are the ideas right now worth betraying? What are the lies we tell ourselves now?

Pet stores just sell their animals.

Do not withhold good from those to whom it is due, when it is in the power of your hand to do so.

Character, not circumstances, makes the man.

The white man who begins by cheating a Negro usually ends by cheating a white man. The white man who begins to break the law by lynching a Negro soon yields to the temptation to lynch a white man.

He was too big to be little, too good to be mean.

The more I consider the subject, the more strongly I am convinced that the most harmful effect of the practice to which the people in certain sections of the South have felt themselves compelled to resort, in order to get rid of the force of the Negroes' ballot, is not wholly in the wrong done to the Negro, but in the permanent injury to the morals of the white man.

After all, what is sin? It is an action through which a person betrays his dignity.

But what are pity, conscience, or fearTo the brazen pair, comparedWith the living sorceryOf their hot embraces?

War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things; the decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. A man who has nothing for which he is willing to fight; nothing he cares more about than his own personal safety; is a miserable creature who has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself. — John Stuart Mill

When law and morality contradict each other the citizen has the cruel alternative of either losing his sense of morality or losing his respect of the law. — Frederic Bastiat

Competition, which is said to be "the life of trade," when pushed too far, is no less the death of it--and of the soul.

Men were created for something better than merely to make money. A close application to business, until a competence is gained, is one of the chief virtues; but to continue in trade long after this result is obtained, is one of the signs, not to be mistaken, of a sordid and ignoble nature.

What we call conscience, in many instances, is only a wholesome fear of the constable.

If one could only tear down his character, as old buildings are torn down, and build it up anew, as these are rebuilt! And so, in effect, it can be. A noble property of character is, that it is susceptible of improvement.

In a contest with a weaker party it is more honorable to yield than to force concession. Magnanimity becomes the strong.

Next to living with honor is to die with honor.

Besides the five senses, there is a sixth sense, of equal importance--the sense of duty.

Leave nothing but footprints, take nothing but pictures, kill nothing but time.

Happiness is inseparably connected with decent, clean behavior.