Quotes About Ethics

Don't underestimate the viciousness of academics when funding is at stake.

Shooting people to keep them from dying had logical flaws obvious to everyone.

Between justice and genocide there is, in the long run, no middle ground.

There is no moral difference between ordering an execution, and carrying it out.

Commodore Stephen Decatur. And he said, 'My country, may she always be right—but my country, right or wrong.

All persons possessing any portion of power ought to be strongly and awfully impressed with an idea that they act in trust and that they are to account for their conduct in that trust to the one great Master, Author, and Founder of society.

I have seen you grow brutal under a vocabulary of love. If you wanted to thieve, your code would expand to embrace the act of thieving. Feeling no need to drink, you will promptly despise a drunkard.

Go to the meat-market of a Saturday night and see the crowds of live bipeds staring up at the long rows of dead quadrupeds. Does not that sight take a tooth out of the cannibal's jaw?

he's sold all on 'em but one, and that one he's trying to sell to-night, cause to-morrow's Sunday, and it would not do to be sellin' human heads about the streets when folks is goin' to churches.

In times of strong emotion mankind disdain all base considerations.

The term 'Savage' is, I conceive, often misapplied, and indeed, when I consider the vices, cruelties, and enormities of every kind that spring up in the tainted atmosphere of a feverish civilization, I am inclined to think that so far as the relative wickedness of the parties is concerned, four or five Marquesan Islanders sent to the United States as Missionaries might be quite as useful as an equal number of Americans despatched to the Islands in a similar capacity.

Starbuck was an honest, upright man; but out of Starbuck's heart, at that instant when he saw the muskets, there strangely evolved an evil thought; but so blent with its neutral or good accompaniments that for the instant he hardly knew it for itself.

That mortal man should feed upon the creature that feeds his lamp

What of it, if some old hunks of a sea-captain orders me to get a broom and sweep down the decks? What does that indignity amount to, weighed, I mean, in the scales of the New Testament?

It is often one of the prime redeeming qualities of your man of violence, that at times he has as stiff an arm to back a poor stranger in a strait, as to plunder a wealthy one.

man is a money-making animal, which propensity too often interferes with his benevolence.

Takže mladíku, musím tÄ› jednou provždy ujistit, že je lepÅ¡í plavit se pod kapitánem zasmuÅ¡ilým, ale dobrým, než usmÄ›vavým a Å¡patným.

Cannibals? who is not a cannibal? I tell you it will be more tolerable for the Fejee that salted down a lean missionary in his cellar against a coming famine; it will be more tolerable for that provident Fejee, I say, in the day of judgment, than for thee, civilized and enlightened gourmand, who nailest geese to the ground and feastest on their bloated livers in thy pate-de-foie-gras.

My lord, it is easier for some men to be saints, than for others not to be sinners.

Tell a good man that he is free to commit murder, — will he murder? Tell a murderer that at the peril of his soul he indulges in murderous thoughts, — will that make him a saint?

Ah, thought he, after good actions one's conscience is never ungrateful, however much so the benefited party may be.

Is it, thought Captain Delano, that this hapless man is one of those paper captains I've known, who by policy wink at what by power they cannot put down? I know no sadder sight than a commander who has little of command but the name.

I tell you it will be more tolerable for the Feegee that salted down a lean missionary in his cellar against a coming famine; it will be more tolerable for that provident Feegee, I say, in the day of judgment, than for thee, civilized and enlightened gourmand, who nailest geese to the ground and feastest on their bloated livers in thy paté-de-foie-gras.

Can't stop a Nazi with a lawbook.