Quotes About Ethics

If a man cannot tell what he wants to do, then he must find out what he ought to do. If desire has become complicated, then hold fast to duty.

And that was all the part of it - the way you were obliged to live. You stifled a groan, you lied about your love, you deceived your legal wife, and all in the name of honour. That was the damned paradox of it - in order to behave well, you have to behave badly.

Most people, in my opinion, steal much of what they are. If they didn't what poor items they would be.

It seemed to us philosophically self-evident that suicide was every free person's right: a logical act when faced with illness or senility; a heroic one when faced with torture or the avoidable deaths of others; a glamourous one in the fury of dissappointed love (see: Great Literature).

It was perfectly possible to be an artist, yet also to be robust and responsible.

The law, and society, and religion all said it was impossible to be sane, healthy, and kill yourself.

Honour is not just a matter of internal good feeling, but also of external behaviour.

It had seemed to us philosophically self-evident that suicide was every free person's right: a logical act when faced with terminal illness or senility; a heroic one when faced with torture or the avoidable deaths of others; a glamorous one in the fury of disappointed love (see: Great Literature).

But he would never join their number, never be a member of the smiling retinue of former lovers. He considered that sort of behavior rather beastly, in fact immoral. He refused to be turned from a lover into a dear friend. He was uninterested in that transition.

between the principle and its implementation often lay some anguish.

Nobody stops to think about the world anymore. We live in a world where they make children pay to see the fish eat. Nowadays even fish are exploited, she thought. Exploited, and then poisoned. The ocean out there is filling up with poison. The fish will die too

When I tell people that she was the most grown-up person I have known, I suppose what I mean is that there were principles very close behind, if not actually embedded in, all her actions and thoughts.

If you saved yourself, you might also save those around you, those you loved. And since you would do anything in the world to save those you loved, you did anything in the world to save yourself. And because there was no choice, equally there was no possibility of avoiding moral corruption. —

Integrity is like virginity: once lost, never recoverable

You realize that you want official interference into other people's lives but not into your own. You also realize that your truthfulness has become dangerously flexible.

Habíamos juzgado filosóficamente evidente que el suicidio era un derecho de cualquier persona libre: un acto lógico frente a una enfermedad terminal o la senilidad; una acción heroica frente a la tortura o la muerte evitable de otros; un acto elegante en la rabia del amor contrariado.

No existe la justicia, ni aquí ni en ninguna parte.

All political and social systems appeared to us corrupt, yet we declined to consider an alternative other than hedonistic chaos.

In James's comparatively simple set of values, a little toadying seldom went amiss.

Ich kenne den hochmoralischen Ton nur zu gut, den die rotnasigen Alkoholiker unter den Journalisten so gern anschlagen, wenn sie sich über die Fehltritte der Großen auslassen.

Others went further: on one of Stanley's expeditions, James Jameson, heir to an Irish whiskey fortune, bought an eleven-year-old girl so he could sketch her being dismembered and eaten.

People know the difference between good and evil in their hearts—if they search them. Religions twist good and evil. Their differences are the kind that need to be taught because they aren't natural.

Omission is a sin only if, in the process of deceiving, you forget the truth. Lying is a sin only if, in the process, the lie becomes the only truth.

Dad was not a religious man, and he once said to me that he didn't think he would believe in God at all were it not for the existence of two things: trees — and man's conscience. He said that without trees, we would not survive on this planet, for they feed us, clothe us, shelter us, make oxygen. Without a conscience, man would probably never have developed beyond a primitive state.