Quotes About Ethics

I have written a wicked book, and feel spotless as the lamb.

There is no dignity in wickedness, whether in purple or rags; and hell is a democracy of devils, where all are equals.

There is nothing namable but that some men will, or undertake to, do it for pay.

Woe to him whose good name is more to him than goodness.

But when a man suspects any wrong, it sometimes happens that if he be already involved in the matter, he insensibly strives to cover up his suspicions even from himself.

It's an all-fired outrage to tell any human creature that he's bound to hell.

if you gobern de shark in you, why den you be angel; for all angel is not'ing more dan de shark well goberned.

I'm a vegetarian - I think there's a strong possibility, had I not become a vegetarian, I would not be working now. I became a vegetarian about 25 years ago, and I did it out of concern for animals. But I immediately began having more energy and feeling better.

Physician-assisted suicide and euthanasia have been profound ethical issues confronting doctors since the birth of Western medicine, more than 2,000 years ago.

A lot of the films I've made probably could have worked just as well 50 years ago, and that's just because I have a lot of old-fashion values.

Several years ago, when I was about to start a novel, I thought I might get some mileage out of the idea of a civilization in which people somehow felt - that is, they shared - all the pain and all the pleasure they caused one another.

I will not play just an evil part. In fact, I got offered $7 million several years ago to play the part that Faye Dunaway played in 'Supergirl.' I was kind of insulted. I was impressed with the money, but I said, 'Why are you asking me to play an evil witch? Do I come across as an evil witch to you?'

We need to go back to the way it was 30 years ago, when everybody had Grandma and Grandpa, and we were willing to pass moral judgments about right and wrong.

People fight today for the same fundamental reasons the Greek historian Thucydides identified nearly 2,500 years ago: fear, honor, and interest.

Forty years ago, we were on the tail of the Front Page era. There was a different point of view. Reporters and editors were more forgiving of public people. They didn't think they had to stick someone in jail to make a career.

That wasn't because of money, it was because I had a job for the next two days and wanted to work. So I faked a test. That was over two years ago. Why has there been no issue about it since then?

There's good and bad in everybody. I wasn't looking for the good, or looking for the bad. This is a man who signed his pact with the devil 20 years ago, and he's learned to live with it. He's tried to protect his family from it.

Twenty years ago, you might have been pessimistic and said there's no hope. But these days, some of our very biggest companies are acting remarkably cleanly. And in some cases, although not all cases, the CEOs are the driving forces behind that.

When I started doing my work years ago, I had doubts as to whether the informed-consent question was answerable.

It wasn't until two or three years ago that I actually learned that in the end he actually did kill someone. But that was a choice that he faced: to kill or be killed.

If you look at the sponsors who were in the sport 15 years ago compared to now there are a lot fewer. Why? Because those runners who took drugs tainted the sport. They tainted all of us in it.

A reputation takes years and years and years to build, and it takes one press of a button to ruin it. Don't let that happen to you. You've done so much work; you've put in so much effort. Don't let one moment ruin your entire life because you wanted to be funny or you were mad or because you had a mood.

A bad act done will fester and create in its own way. It's not only goodness that creates. Bad things create. They have their own yeast.

We can do genetics. We can do experiments on fruit flies. We can do experiments on yeast. It's not so easy to do experiments on humans. So, in fact, it helps us, to interpret our own genetic code, to have the genetic code of the other species.