Quotes About Ethics

Someone once said that if you steal from one writer, it's called plagiarism, but if you steal from several, it's called research. So steal from everybody, but steal only a sentence or a phrase at a time. If you use much more than that, you must get permission and then give credit.

Why do people choose to adulterate fine wines, beers, and spirits?

H]e cannot be drunken or dirty; the slightest dubiousness is quick to exile him to the police force, journalism, the oyster boats or some other Siberia of the broken.

Money is always on its way somewhere. What you do with it while it is in your keeping and the direction you send it in say much about you. Your treatment of and respect for money, how you make it, and how you spend it, reflect your character.

To be ethical is to endeavor to find one's proper place in the larger scheme of things rather than to seek to assert human superiority over the natural world.

Veganism is not about giving anything up or losing anything; it is about gaining the peace within yourself that comes from embracing nonviolence and refusing to participate in the exploitation of the vulnerable

Ethical veganism results in a profound revolution within the individual; a complete rejection of the paradigm of oppression and violence that she has been taught from childhood to accept as the natural order. It changes her life and the lives of those with whom she shares this vision of nonviolence. Ethical veganism is anything but passive; on the contrary, it is the active refusal to cooperate with injustice

Veganism is not a "sacrifice." It is a joy.

All sentient beings should have at least one right—the right not to be treated as property

Every time you drink a glass of milk or eat a piece of cheese, you harm a mother. Please go vegan.

Any serious social, political, and economic change must include veganism.

Ethical veganism represents a commitment to nonviolence.

You cannot live a nonviolent life as long as you are consuming violence. Please consider going vegan.

We proclaim human intelligence to be morally valuable per se because we are human. If we were birds, we would proclaim the ability to fly as morally valuable per se. If we were fish, we would proclaim the ability to live underwater as morally valuable per se. But apart from our obviously self-interested proclamations, there is nothing morally valuable per se about human intelligence.

We cannot justify treating any sentient nonhuman as our property, as a resource, as a thing that we an use and kill for our purposes.

Speciesism is morally objectionable because, like racism, sexism, and heterosexism, it links personhood with an irrelevant criterion. Those who reject speciesism are committed to rejecting racism, sexism, heterosexism, and other forms of discrimination as well.

The distinction between meat and other animal products is total nonsense. Vegetarianism is a morally incoherent position. If you regard animals as members of the moral community, you really don't have a choice but to go vegan.

Welfare reforms and the whole "happy" exploitation movement are not "baby steps." They are big steps–in a seriously backward direction.

Being vegan is not a matter of "lifestyle." It is a matter of fundamental moral obligation. Is being vegan a matter of "choice"? Only insofar as we are able to choose to ignore our moral obligations not to exploit the vulnerable.

When it comes to animal agriculture, there is conventional, which is really hideous, and "compassionate" or "certified humane" or whatever, which *may* be *slightly* less hideous. But it's all torture. It's all wrong. These "happy" gimmicks are just designed to make the public feel better about exploiting animals. Don't buy the propaganda of "happy" exploitation. Go vegan and promote veganism.

We should never present flesh as somehow morally distinguishable from dairy. To the extent it is morally wrong to eat flesh, it is as morally wrong — and possibly more morally wrong — to consume dairy

To cease from evil, to do good, and to purify the mind yourself, this is the teaching of all the Buddhas.

The most precious treasure is virtue.

The most dangerous thief is unwholesome thought.