Quotes About Ethics

do not let your left hand know what your right hand does, for it is not worth knowing.

Can there not be a government in which the majorities do not virtually decide right and wrong, but conscience?

La legge non ha mai reso gli uomini neppure poco più giusti; e anzi, a causa del rispetto della legge, perfino gli onesti sono quotidianamente trasformati in agenti d'ingiustizia.

En büyük ve en yayg?n hatalar?n sürdürülebilmesi için olabildiÄŸince tarafs?z bir erdem gerekir.

there is greater anxiety, commonly, to have fashionable, or at least clean and unpatched clothes, than to have a sound conscience.

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? — 1849 Essay on Civil Disobedience.

The peculiarity of ill temper is that it is the vice of the virtuous.

Esistono certi scrittori religiosi o meglio morali, i quali sostengono che in questo mondo la virtù è la via sicura della felicità e il vizio quella dell'infelicità: dottrina veramente sana e consolante, contro cui abbiamo un'obiezione sola, e cioè che non è vera.

There are a set of religious, or rather moral writers, who teach that virtue is the certain road to happiness, and vice to misery, in this world. A very wholesome and comfortable doctrine, and to which we have but one objection, namely, that it is not true. Indeed

a proof that good books, no more than good men, do always survive the bad.

The first is, If they have anything good in their house (which indeed very seldom happens) to produce it only to persons who travel with great equipages. 2dly, To charge the same for the very worst provisions, as if they were the best. And lastly, If any of their guests call but for little, to make them pay a double price for everything they have; so that the amount by the head may be much the same. The

The elegant Lord Shaftesbury somewhere objects to telling too much truth: by which it may be fairly inferred, that, in some cases, to lie is not only excusable but commendable. And

Money is the fruit of evil as often as the root of it.

Conscience - the only incorruptible thing about us

It is significant that while there is a word profiteer to stigmatize those who make allegedly excessive profits, there is no such word as wageer - or losseer.

Laméntase a menudo que los demagogos logren mayor asenso al exponer públicamente sus despropósitos económicos que los hombres de bien al denunciar sus fallos.

La política que propugne dependerá de la postura particular que se adopte en cada momento. Porque cada cual es unas veces el Dr. Jekyll y otras Mr. Hyde.

No problem worthy of the name is an indivisible unit, and may always be broken into smaller problems. The whole science of aesthetics is included in the simple question What is beauty?, the science of ethics is merely the answer to What is right conduct?

do you think it is better to be clever than to be good?" "Good for what?" asked the Doctor. "You are good for nothing unless you are clever.

What should one do with the misery of the world in a scheme of the agreeable for one's self?

Wherever you go, madam, it will matter little what you carry. You will always carry your goodness.

It was the tragic part of happiness; one's right was always made of the wrong of some one else.

Don't question your conscience so much--it will get out of tune like a strummed piano. Keep it for great occasions.

The Press, my child," Bight said, "is the watchdog of civilisation, and the watchdog happens to be – it can't be helped – in a chronic state of rabies.