Quotes About Ethics

fairness is like love. What is given has nothing to do with what we seek

In this world, there is no absolute good, no absolute evil, the man said. Good and evil are not fixed, stable entities but are continually trading places.

Life doesn't require ideals. It requires standards of action.

She could not help but feel that paying money to take ownership of a living organism was inappropriate.

Strange as it may seem—or perhaps it does not seem so strange—they all had the same thought: it was so much easier to kill humans on the battlefield than animals in cages, even if, on the battlefield, one might end up being killed oneself.

Un caballero es aquel que no habla demasiado de los impuestos que paga ni de la mujer con quien se acuesta

For it is just as sinful from the standpoint of nature and of truth to be above oneself as to be below oneself.

I should have learned many things from that experience, but when I look back on it, all I gained was one single, undeniable fact. That ultimately I am a person who can do evil. I never consciously tried to hurt anyone, yet good intentions notwithstanding, when necessity demanded, I could become completely self-centered, even cruel. I was the kind of person who could, using some plausible excuse, inflict on a person I cared for a wound that would never heal.

Lo correcto, ¿qué diablos significa eso? ¿Me lo puedes explicar? A decir verdad, no sé muy bien qué es lo correcto. Lo que no es correcto sí lo sé, pero lo correcto, ¿qué es?

A gentleman doesn't talk much about the taxes he paid, or the women he sleeps with.

The lesson I learned from this is that it's easier to hold to your principles 100% of the time than it is to hold to them 98% of the time.

To work in an organization whose value system is unacceptable or incompatible with one's own condemns a person both to frustration and to nonperformance.

Hollywood has the best moral compass, because it has compassion.

The pigs were pushing their noses through the slats in the truck bed, which made Langston so unaccountably sad she thought she would have to sit down on the sidewalk. How is it possible, she thought, that a person can drive a thinking, feeling, animal to slaughter and not become less than an animal himself? And what were the pigs searching for, after all, but air and freedom?

How is it possible, she thought, that a person can drive a thinking, feeling animal to slaughter and not become less than an animal himself?

See the good in that which is evil, and the evil in that which is good.

I really wanted to punish humanity, but I realized that I was playing God, and that didn't work.

Perhaps the most dangerous people in the world are the ones who believe in right and wrong but what they ascribe to as "right" and "wrong" is completely insane. They are bad with the conviction that they are good. That idea is the impetus behind evil.

The only people who had any actual grasp on morality were the under-eight demographic. They hadn't created all sorts of loopholes in their understanding of it. Children are born with eyes as large as those of adults. Children keep theirs wide open. And children know, without a doubt, that there is a difference between right and wrong.

Adalet duygusu, Kohlhaas'? bir haydut, bir katil yapt?.

The point is you are supposed to vote for the principle of the thing, not the itsy-bitsy detail about this percent and that percent.

pero al fin y al cabo todas las buenas obras son una mezcla de altruismo e interés propio,...

T he test of all beliefs is their practical effect in life.

God sleepeth not, and He will visit His judgement upon you. Better were it for you to have a millstone hung about your neck and sink into the sea than to be hated and despised of all men.