Quotes About Ethics

Virtue does not always demand a heavy sacrifice only the willingness to make it when necessary.

Rascals, would you live forever?

As for conceptual thought, if we grasp the problem as one of escaping from the purely individualizing categories of ethics, of transcending the categories into which our existence as individual subjects necessarily locks us and opening up the radically distinct transindividual perspectives of collective life or historical process, then the conclusion seems unavoidable that we already have the ideal of a thinking able to go beyond good and evil, namely the dialectic itself.

A good cause can become bad if we fight for it with means that are indiscriminately murderous. A bad cause can become good if enough people fight for it in a spirit of comradeship and self-sacrifice. In the end it is how you fight, as much as why you fight, that makes your cause good or bad.

A good lawyer is a bad neighbor.

There is no pillow so soft as a clear conscience.

If we wish to preserve a free society, it is essential that we recognize that the desirability of a particular object is not sufficient justification for the use of coercion.

Men vet hvordan det er om lørdagen, tenkte han mens han gikk over Altenbergbroen, da viser alle embedsmenn tenner og er sure bare fordi de har dårlig samvittighet over at de ikke har gjort noe fornuftig i hele uken.

Der Schiksal der Menschen wird davon abhängen, ob sich die Politik endlich bequemt, das Leben eines jeden heilig zu nehmen, oder ob die Hure weiterhin für jene auf die Straße geht, denen nichts heilig ist. Die Dame muß sich entscheiden.

Ich fühle, wie ich langsam zu einem Mörder werde. Mein Glaube an die Humanität ist machtlos. Und weil ich es weiß, bin ich ein Säufer geworden.

We do not consider patriotism desirable if it contradicts civilized behavior.

Whoever is content with the world, and who profits from its lack of justice, does not want to change it.

He who fights monsters should look into it that he himself does not become a monster. When you gaze long into the Abyss, the Abyss also gazes into you.

Battle not with monsters, lest ye become a monster

Discontent is the seed of ethics.

Virtues are dangerous as vices insofar as they are allowed to rule over one as authorities and not as qualities one develops oneself.

Morality is the best of all devices for leading mankind by the nose.

Morality is herd instinct in the individual.

Every philosophy is the philosophy of some stage of life.

Morality in Europe today is herd-morality

To win over certain people to something, it is only necessary to give it a gloss of love of humanity, nobility, gentleness, self-sacrifice -- and there is nothing you cannot get them to swallow.

Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And when you look long into an abyss, the abyss also looks into you.

Beggars should be abolished. It annoys one to give to them, and it annoys one not to give to them.

The broad effects which can be obtained by punishment in man and beast are the increase of fear, the sharpening of the sense of cunning, the mastery of the desires; so it is that punishment tames man, but does not make him "better."