Quotes About Ethics

Licences to have babies incidentally is something that I got in trouble for some years ago for suggesting even in Canada that this might be necessary at some point, at least some restriction on the right to have a child.

What we think is ethical today, we may not have thought ethical five or 10 years ago. Cloning, stem cell research? However we feel about those things today, we may feel differently 10 years from now.

For in my tradition, as a Jew, I believe that whatever we receive we must share.

The right to privacy has both positive and negative connotations for those who consider themselves part of the natural law tradition.

Sometimes it is easy... to enhance your prestige by not exercising your responsibility, but that's not been the tradition of the court.

When Zionism becomes co-extensive with Jewishness, Jewishness is pitted against the diversity that defines democracy, and if I may say so, betrays one of the most important ethical dimensions of the diasporic Jewish tradition: namely, the obligation of co-habitation with those different from ourselves.

There was an honorable tradition of using anonymous sources that was ruined by Jayson Blair.

I will always speak out when someone says that a principle or a rule or a tradition trumps people.

There's a longstanding tradition that journalists don't cheer in the press box. They have opinions, like anyone else, but they are expected to keep those opinions out of their work.

In the old fairy tales, often a 'moral' was tacked on at the end of the story - say, if a book was going to be marketed to young readers. And the morals don't really suit the stories at all, which makes them super weird - part of why I love the tradition so much. I do play with this, though I am more concerned with ethics than morals.

In the United States, the mainstream news outlets like to portray themselves as observers, content to let events play out without interference. But in Britain, where crusading journalistic campaigns are part of the tradition, it is far more acceptable for reporters to become active participants, with a specific outcome in mind.

Our moral traditions developed concurrently with our reason, not as its product.

In many countries today, moral and ethical norms are being reconsidered; national traditions, differences in nation and culture are being erased.

When you look at food as an ethical issue in the Christian tradition, you don't find very much about it. You don't find, as you do in the Jewish or Islamic or Hindu traditions, a lot of restrictions saying you can eat this but you can't eat that.

We live in an age in which the biblical-moral traditions that have guided us for centuries are increasingly being forgotten.

I don't want to just traffic in sensationalism or in mere blood.

Some media companies that rely on advertising revenue are tying journalist compensation to the traffic their story generates. It doesn't work because it de-prioritizes writing.

I didn't know it was even possible to sell humans. I thought people can only sell animals, chickens. But I didn't even know that kind of concept - human traffic - can be exist in the world. So I just couldn't process it when I heard it.

Selling the commodity of humans has to be the biggest business out there, as it is the most lucrative. I cannot go to sleep at night, unless I know that I am using all of my platforms to fight human trafficking.

Tragedy, for me, is not a conflict between right and wrong, but between two different kinds of right.

Well, my definition of a tragedy is a clash between right and right.

I believe every abortion is a tragedy.

The Sea Shepherd Conservation Society recognizes that the deaths of four sealers is a tragedy, but Sea Shepherd also recognizes that the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of seal pups is an even greater tragedy.

Thriller novelists get asked - berated, sometimes - about whether their work glorifies bad behavior, even, exploits human tragedy for entertainment.