Quotes About Ethics

Action is character. What a person does is what he is, not what he says.

Hegel, the great eighteenth-century German philosopher, maintained that the essence of tragedy derives not from one character being right and the other being wrong, or from the conflict of good versus evil, but from a conflict in which both characters are right, and thus the tragedy is one of right against right, being carried to its logical conclusion.

Among the smaller duties of life I hardly know any one more important than that of not praising where praise is not due.

A life of knowledge is not often a life of injury and crime.

every single act we do has the potential of causing pain, and every single thing we do has consequences that echo way beyond what we can imagine. It doesn't mean we shouldn't act. It means we should act carefully. Everything matters [p. 41].

The Buddha taught complete honesty, with the extra instruction that everything a person says should be truthful and helpful.

People are cruel, and they will do anything.

A wife is meant to be cherished and to be treated with a gentle hand, while a mistress is a convenient cunt to rut in.

If there were angels, would they be the good guys or the bad?" Lindsay

Why do we electrocute men for murdering an individual and then pin a purple heart on them for mass slaughter of someone arbitrarily labeled "enemy?

I said maybe if you loved a woman it wouldn't seem so boring, but Eric said it would be spoiled by thinking this woman too was just an animal like the rest, so if he loved anybody he would never go to bed with her. He'd go to a whore if he had to and keep the woman he loved free from all the dirty business.

The American sage Will Rogers captured this concept precisely. Of course people like low taxes, Rogers said, but there's something even more important: "People want JUST taxes, more than they want lower taxes. They want to know that every man is paying his proportionate share according to his wealth.

It's not wise to violate the rules until you know how to observe them.

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

Neither fear nor courage saves us. Unnatural vices Are fathered by our heroism. Virtues Are forced upon us by our impudent crimes.

I see nothing quite conclusive in the art of temporal government, But violence, duplicity and frequent malversation.

We must speak out when evil shows itself, whether there is any hope of changing it or not.

If only men would do what they should.

We are all children of both the good and evil that has gone before us.

But in Africa bureaucrats are usually too proud to accept a bribe, something I admire when I'm not the one being arrested.

I'm a fool, that I should simply trick the tourists like everyone else. after all, most of them will never come back. and what are tourists for but for tricking?

the object of war was not to win battles or destroy the enemy, but to provide a field for the performance of heroic deeds, which were subsequently immortalized in poetry. For the early Arabs to fight honorably was more important than to win.   T

Man enters into the ethical world through fear and not through love."—Paul Ricoeur, The Symbolism of Evil.

Which do you think would be worse? Tippen asked. Knowing you're a son of a bitch or knowing you fathered one?