Quotes About Ethics

Studies have shown that many heads of Fortune Five Hundred companies are sociopaths.

Some days life just sucked when you were a decent human being.

You can go anywhere in a book. Be anyone. And life has to make sense in a book. Real life doesn't have to make sense. In real life good people can turn out to be bad people, and bad people can get away with murder...and worse. I'll take a good book over that any day.

The day you get used to this , turn in your shield and your gun. You won't belong to the human race anymore. ~ Vince to Mendez

In short, this or that behavior wasn't good because scripture said so. Scripture mandated this or that behavior because it was good, and if it was already good before scripture said so, then it was good for some reason inherent to itself, some reason that reason could discover.

I'm not so fond of people myself, Evvy, but I took my vows for a reason. There are two classes of people in the world, the destroyers and the builders. I want to build, not destroy. You need to ask yourself who you're going to be.

Moral issues rarely have yes or no answers. -Myles to Alanna when she asks about the Gift

Would I serve you or (Prince) Jon stolen goods? he asked. No, don't answer me.

Alanna didn't approve of lying, but in a pinch a lie was sometimes better than the truth.

What if custom is wrong? demanded the part of her that believed in the code of chivalry. A knight must set things right.

Do we say, Oh now I'm going to be nice to the weak and the small? Or do we do as we learned when we were pages?

Wouldn't-- Kel began to say, but the words stuck in her mouth. She swallowed and tried again. Wouldn't it be well, not nice to flirt with somebody you don't want to fall in love with?

Only the man who wishes to be corrupted will fall into evil ways.

He deserves to die - but do you deserve to kill him?

It disgusts me," whispered Baird, "what people allow, if they think those who commit vile acts can help them to achieve some goal.

That was a monstrous thought - he KNEW it was monstrous. Yet he thought it all the same.

The person who commits an action is the one responsible for it, not the people he commits the action upon.

Man is certainly free, but he is responsible for this freedom before God as before men. This responsibility is inevitably moral. In order of this morality, to be free is to protect the freedom of others and their dignities.

To every man is given the key to the gates of heaven. The same key opens the gates of hell. —BUDDHIST PROVERB

And does man simply choose evil, or does he create it?

And does man simply choose evil, or does he create it?...Is evil a force that swims in human blood, struggling to find its way into the heart, or is it an external possibility wanting to be formed?

As Jean-Paul Sartre said, we are the sum total of our actions. What is in our hearts does not matter.

Campbell's Law, which says that any metric used to determine social decision-making will become corrupted by people who want to affect those decisions.

You can be true to the character all you want but you've got to go home with yourself.