Quotes About Ethics

Moderation in temper is always a virtue; but moderation in principle is always a vice.

Times of great idealism carry equal chances for greater corruptibility.

times of great idealism carry equal chances for great corruptibility.

When power corrupts, it keeps a log of its progress, written into that most sensitive memory device, the human face.

Is the Tube human? Semihuman? Well, uh, how human's that, so forth. Are TV sets brought alive by broadcast signals, like the clay bodies of men and women animated by the spirit of God's love?

Y qué quieres?, ¿es que sólo tengo que fiarme de las buenas personas?, tío, a las buenas personas las compran y las venden todos los días. Tanto da que me fíe de algún auténtico cabrón de vez en cuando, al final viene a ser lo mismo. Quiero decir que no apostaría por ninguno de los dos.

Dismiss the thought," protested Lindsay from a certain equine altitude, "for it would make us no better than common thieves.

When you reach a point in your life where you understand who is fucking who --beg pardon, Lord-- who's taking it and who's not, that's when you're obliged to choose how much you'll go along with. If you are not devoting every breath of every day waking and sleeping to destroying those who slaughter the innocent as easy as signing a check, then how innocent are you willing to call yourself? It must be negotiated with the day, from those absolute terms

We seem to be getting closer and closer to a situation where nobody is responsible for what they did but we are all responsible for what somebody else did.

The question is not what anybody deserves. The question is who is to take on the God-like role of deciding what everybody else deserves. You can talk about "social justice" all you want. But what death taxes boil down to is letting politicians take money from widows and orphans to pay for goodies that they will hand out to others, in order to buy votes to get reelected. That is not social justice or any other kind of justice.

Among the many other questions raised by the nebulous concept of "greed" is why it is a term applied almost exclusively to those who want to earn more money or to keep what they have already earned—never to those wanting to take other people's money in taxes or to those wishing to live on the largesse dispensed from such taxation. No amount of taxation is ever described as "greed" on the part of government or the clientele of government.

The New York Times' long-standing motto, "All the News That's Fit to Print" should be changed to reflect today's reality: "Manufacturing News to Fit an Ideology.

Clearly, only very unequal intellectual and moral standing could justify having equality imposed, whether the people want it or not, as Dworkin suggests, and only very unequal power would make it possible.

Envy was once considered to be one of the seven deadly sins before it became one of the most admired virtues under its new name, 'social justice'.

Justice at all costs' is not justice.

I have never known much good done by those who affected to trade for the public good.

Abstract moral decisions are much easier to make on paper or in a classroom in later centuries than in the midst of the dilemmas actually faced by those living in very different circumstances, including serious dangers.

His was the unconstrained vision of human nature, in which man was capable of directly feeling other people's needs as more important than his own, and therefore of consistently acting impartially, even when his own interests or those of his family were involved.

People are never more sincere than when they assume their own moral superiority.

Among the many other questions raised by the nebulous concept of "greed" is why it is a term applied almost exclusively to those who want to earn more money or to keep what they have already earned—never to those wanting to take other people's money in taxes or to those wishing to live on the largess dispensed from such taxation.

When you want to help people, you tell them the truth. When you want to help yourself, you tell them what they want to hear. People with careers as ethnic leaders usually tell their followers what they want to hear.

Among the precepts that Andrew Jackson's mother taught him were never to sue anybody for slander or for assault and battery: Always settle them cases yourself.

We seem to be moving steadily in the direction of a society where no one is responsible for what he himself did but we are all responsible for what somebody else did, either in the present or in the past.

But beliefs are neither moral nor immoral. They may be accurate or inaccurate, founded or unfounded, but they acquire moral significance only when they are shaped to serve some ulterior purpose that is either moral or immoral.