Quotes About Ethics

If I'd written all the truth I knew for the past ten years, about 600 people - including me - would be rotting in prison cells from Rio to Seattle today. Absolute truth is a very rare and dangerous commodity in the context of professional journalism.

There is not a special imposition on writers to be activists. All that does is encourage writers to write propaganda. Propaganda can be written by anybody, including dictators.

I didn't want to submit to the army and then, on the day of judgment, have God say to me, 'Why did you do that?' This life is a trial, and you realize that what you do is going to be written down for Judgment Day.

I've written for 'The Times' because they have valued what I do enough to pay me. The 'New Statesman' magazine also asked me to write an article, but they didn't want to pay me anything. To me, that shows how much they value quality journalism.

I am not against kissing on-screen but I definitely do not want to be written about for the number of kisses I have had on screen.

The discipline of the written word punishes both stupidity and dishonesty.

I am not bound to win, but I am bound to be true. I am not bound to succeed, but I am bound to live by the light that I have. I must stand with anybody that stands right, and stand with him while he is right, and part with him when he goes wrong.

It's morally wrong to allow a sucker to keep his money.

They tell us that suicide is the greatest piece of cowardice... that suicide is wrong; when it is quite obvious that there is nothing in the world to which every man has a more unassailable title than to his own life and person.

Abortion is clearly wrong.

Right is right, even if everyone is against it, and wrong is wrong, even if everyone is for it.

Character is doing the right thing when nobody's looking. There are too many people who think that the only thing that's right is to get by, and the only thing that's wrong is to get caught.

The last temptation is the greatest treason: to do the right deed for the wrong reason.

Genuine tragedies in the world are not conflicts between right and wrong. They are conflicts between two rights.

It is the greatest good to the greatest number of people which is the measure of right and wrong.

I don't believe there's two sides to every story. It's black and white. There's right and wrong.

When you think of it, really there are four fundamental questions of life. You've asked them, I've asked them, every thinking person asks them. They boil down to this; origin, meaning, morality and destiny. 'How did I come into being? What brings life meaning? How do I know right from wrong? Where am I headed after I die?'

The truth is that killing innocent people is always wrong - and no argument or excuse, no matter how deeply believed, can ever make it right. No religion on earth condones the killing of innocent people; no faith tradition tolerates the random killing of our brothers and sisters on this earth.

What's right is right, and what's wrong is wrong.

Perhaps it is better to be irresponsible and right, than to be responsible and wrong.

The hardest decisions in life are not between good and bad or right and wrong, but between two goods or two rights.

There will be good and bad, right and wrong. Your reaction of choice, good or bad, has consequences that affect you and those around you.

You can't regulate child labor. You can't regulate slavery. Some things are just wrong.

Wrong life cannot be lived rightly.