Quotes About Ethics

the guilty are innocent, only the innocent can commit crimes.

I could unleash violence and death on women and children in Mahec, but I could no more hit a woman than fly in the air; because I'm civilised, I suppose.

Mercy isn't fair, it means someone getting away with what he did because the Boss feels sorry for him. Justice is fair. Justice puts people in prison. Mercy lets them out again. Of course mercy isn't fair. It's breaking all the rules.

Ah well." Gignomai turned slowly round. "It's not often commented on, but when you stop and think, mercy is the biggest injustice of them all.

Two inconsistent duties sever My mind with cruel shock, As when the current of a river Is split upon a rock.

You kill life and call it an act of religion. Then what is irreligion?

Suppose you scrub your ethical skin until it shines, but inside there is no music, then what? Mohammed's son pores over words, and points out this and that, but if his chest is not soaked dark with love, then what? The Yogi comes along in his famous orange, but if inside he is colorless, then what?

THE PRACTICE OF PRESENCE invites us to a conscious relationship with God. Faith, righteous action, ethics, and social justice are all founded upon a state in which the human being remembers God. Yet, the capacity to remember God is related to the ability to be awake, to be here. To act with intention (niyah), with reflection (tafakkur), with self-vigilance (taqwa), and with beneficence (ihsan) presumes a state of conscious presence.

Cast aside those who liken godliness to whimsy and who try to combine their greed for wealth with their desire for a happy afterlife.

He who requires urging to do a noble act will never accomplish it.

The best of men is he who blushes when you praise him and remains silent when you defame him.

He worked for Rockefeller?" Oppenheimer said, puffing on his pipe. And then lowering his voice, he quipped, "I, too, have taken money for doing harm.

What are we to make of a civilization which has always regarded ethics as an essential part of human life," he asked, but "which has not been able to talk about the prospect of killing almost everybody except in prudential and game-theoretical terms?

but at times it seemed that, as Thorpe puts it, "Oppenheimer offered to weep for the world, but not help to change it.

He had come to loathe these Air Force men with their commitment to building more and more bombs for the purpose of killing more and more millions of people. To his mind, they were so dangerous, so morally obtuse, that he almost welcomed them as political enemies. A few weeks later, Finletter and his people told the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy that it was an open question "whether [Oppenheimer] was a subversive.

We did have a pretty intense discussion of why it was that we were continuing to make a bomb after the war had been [virtually] won.

Echoing his discussion of the previous day with Szilard, Oppenheimer said, "If we were to offer to exchange information before the bomb was actually used, our moral position would be greatly strengthened.

indifference to the sufferings one causes . . . is the terrible and permanent form of cruelty.

Oppenheimer was acutely attuned to the consequences of his actions, but, like Arjuna, he was also driven to do his duty. So duty (and ambition) overrode his doubts—though doubt remained, in the form of an ever-present awareness of human fallibility.

Así pues, a finales de la década de 1870, la Sociedad por la Cultura Ética de Felix Adler proporcionó al colectivo judío neoyorquino un medio para afrontar aquella intolerancia creciente en un momento oportuno.

Modern Prometheans have raided Mount Olympus again and have brought back for man the very thunderbolts of Zeus.

En 1921, el año en que Robert se graduó en el instituto de la Cultura Ética, Adler exhortó a los estudiantes a desarrollar «imaginación ética», a ver «las cosas no tal como son, sino tal como podrían ser».

Su profesor de ética de la escuela, no obstante, fue John Lovejoy Elliott, quien siempre fue muy crítico ante la participación de Estados Unidos en la guerra.

The guilt consciousness of the atomic bomb scientists is one of the most astounding things I have ever seen.