Quotes About Ethics

Their conscious, deliberate act of murder takes the irreplaceable value of life from another. A murderer, by his own choice to kill, forfeits the right to his own life.

An adversary is not one who does loathsome acts for their own sake. He always has a reason that to him is justification. My cat eats mice. Does that make him bad? I don't think so, and the cat doesn't think so, but I would bet the mice have a different opinion.

You can never stop all wrongdoing, but if you don't punish it, then it proliferates until anarchy wears the robes of tolerance and understanding.

Even a good person can be swept up with the sentiments of a crowd and come to hold perverse beliefs.

But you know how Richard feels. He thinks it would be wrong—more than that, he thinks it would be irresponsible to give in to such a wish when reason tells him he must not.

there is no devil, jack said. we are the devil. the devil is us.

Moral compromise rejects the concept of right and wrong. It says that everyone is equal, all desires are equally valid, all action is equally valid, so everyone should compromise to get along.

Killing is a terrible thing, too. I hate killing. But killing isn't necessarily wrong.

Avoir de la compassion pour les coupables revient à trahir les innocents.

People, if they don't take the lives of others, have the right to live their life.

We all have to die, Johnrock—every one of us. It is how we choose to live that matters. After all, it's the only life each one of us will ever have, so how we live is of paramount importance.

Rational moral choices are based on the value of life, not a consensus. A consensus can't make the sun rise at midnight, nor can it change a wrong into a right, or the other way around. If something is wrong, it matters not if a thousand other men are for it; you must still oppose it. If something is just, no amount of popular outcry should stay you from your course.

for the right person, either would be a tool. for the wrong person, either could be a weapon of evil. it is the mind behind the tool that matters.

The Second Rule is that the greatest harm can result from the best intentions.

Don't lay a cloak of guilt around my shoulders because others are evil.

A person who is dying, with no hope of recovery, and in great suffering, can be no better served than by the benevolent act of assisting them in ending their suffering.

A civilization must have laws, but there cannot be justice when a man with no conscience metes out sentences without compassion or mercy.

The Wizard's Second Rule? What is that? Is it in the archives? Any student of magical lore should know it. The greatest harm can result from the best intentions. ...

Evil begins when you begin to treat people as things.

His philosophy was a mixture of three famous schools -- the Cynics, the Stoics and the Epicureans -- and summed up all three of them in his famous phrase, 'You can't trust any bugger further than you can throw him, and there's nothing you can do about it, so let's have a drink.

What have I always believed? That on the whole, and by and large, if a man lived properly, not according to what any priests said, but according to what seemed decent and honest inside, then it would, at the end, more or less, turn out all right.

Even if it's not your fault, it's your responsibility.

Steal five dollars and you're a common thief. Steal thousands and you're either the government or a hero.

Goodness is about what you do. Not who you pray to.