Quotes About Ethics

The path of least resistance leads to crooked rivers and crooked men.

I have no doubt that it is part of the destiny of the human race in it's gradual improvement, to leave off eating animals.

I have no doubt that it is a part of the destiny of the human race, in its gradual improvement, to leave off eating animals, as surely as savage tribes have left off eating each other when they came in contact with the more civilized.

If a man walks in the woods for love of them half of each day, he is in danger of being regarded as a loafer; but if he spends his whole day as a spectulator, shearing off those woods and making the earth bald before her time, he is esteemed an industrious and enterprising citizen.

The squirrel that you kill in jest, dies in earnest.

The greater part of what my neighbors call good I believe in my soul to be bad, and if I repent of anything, it is very likely to be my good behavior. What demon possessed me that I behaved so well?

Unjust laws exist: shall we be content to obey them, or shall we endeavor to amend them, and obey them until we have succeeded, or shall we transgress them at once?

Law never made men a whit more just; and, by means of their respect for it, even the well-disposed are daily made the agents of injustice.

Must the citizen ever for a moment, or in the least degree, resigns his conscience to the legislator? Why has every man a conscience then? I think that we should be men first, and subjects afterward.

The perception of beauty is a moral test.

There are thousands who are in opinion opposed to slavery and to the war, who yet in effect do nothing to put an end to them; who, esteeming themselves children of Washington and Franklin, sit down with their hands in their pockets, and say that they know not what to do, and do nothing....

Absolutely speaking, the more money, the less virtue; for money comes between a man and his objects, and obtains them for him; it was certainly no great virtue to obtain it.

It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right.

Let your life be a counter-friction to stop the machine. What I have to do is to see, at any rate, that I do not lend myself to the wrong which I condemn.

In an unjust society the only place for a just man is prison.

To be right is more honorable than to be law abiding.

Under a goverment which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison

I think that we should be men first, and subjects afterward. It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right. The only obligation which I have a right to assume is to do at any time what I think right. It is truly enough said that a corporation has no conscience; but a corporation of conscientious men is a corporation with a conscience.

The only obligation which I have a right to assume is to do at any time what I think right.

There is no odor so bad as that which arises from goodness tainted.

A wise man will not leave the right to the mercy of chance, nor wish it to prevail through the power of the majority.

No humane being, past the thoughtless age of boyhood, will wantonly murder any creature, which holds its life by the same tenure that he does.

A government which deliberately enacts injustice, and persists in it, will at length ever become the laughing-stock of the world.

Whatever my own practice may be, I have no doubt that it is part of the destiny of the human race, in its gradual improvement, to leave off eating animals, as surely as the savage tribes have left off eating each other when they came in contact with the more civilized.