Quotes About Ethics

if the unfortunate man, strong of soul, more indignant about his fate than despondent or dejected, wishes for death, and yet preserves his life, without loving it, not from inclination, or fear, but from duty; then his maxim has a moral content.

Gustavo Solivellas dice: Incluso los filósofos elogiarán la guerra como ennobleciendo a la humanidad, olvidando al griego que dijo: La guerra es mala porque engendra más mal que el que mata (Immanuel Kant)

starry heavens above me and the moral law within me.

if freedom were determined by laws, it would not be freedom, but would itself be nothing else but nature.

Het is geheel en al onmogelijk om in de wereld en zelfs ook daarbuiten iets te bedenken wat zonder restrictie voor goed gehouden kan worden, behalve dan een GOEDE WIL.

The pre-eminent good which we call moral can therefore consist in nothing else than the conception of law in itself, which certainly is only possible in a rational being, in so far as this conception, and not the expected effect, determines the will. This is a good which is already present in the person who acts accordingly, and we have not to wait for it to appear first in the result. *

KövetkezÅ'leg a háborúba önmagában valami belsÅ' méltóságot helyeznek, annyira, hogy annak olykor még filozófusok is, mint az emberiség bizonyos megnemesülésének, dicsÅ'ítÅ' beszédet tartanak, megfeledkezve ama görögnek mondásáról: "A háború abban rossz, hogy több rossz embert csinál, mint amennyit elpusztít.

Blind commitment to a theory is not an intellectual virtue: it is an intellectual crime.

Rectitude is the power of deciding upon a certain course of conduct in accordance with reason, without wavering—to die when it is right to die, to strike when to strike is right.

Did not Socrates, all the while he unflinchingly refused to concede one iota of loyalty to his daemon, obey with equal fidelity and equanimity the command of his earthly master, the State? His conscience he followed, alive; his country he served, dying. Alack the day when a state grows so powerful as to demand of its citizens the dictates of their consciences!

Bushido as an independent code of ethics may vanish, but its power will not perish from the earth; its schools of martial prowess or civic honor may be demolished, but its light and its glory will long survive their ruins. Like its symbolic flower, after it is blown to the four winds, it will still bless mankind with the perfume with which it will enrich life.

Chivalry is itself the poetry of life. —SCHLEGEL, Philosophy of History.

Filial Piety, which is considered one of the two wheels of the chariot of Japanese ethics—Loyalty being the other.

Back in 1943, Prince Mikasa Takahito, the youngest brother of Emperor Hirohito, spent a year as a staff officer at the Nanking headquarters of the Japanese Imperial Army's expeditionary force in China, where he heard a young officer speak of using Chinese prisoners for live bayonet practice in order to train new recruits. "It helps them acquire guts," the officer told the prince.

We need a moral philosophy which can speak significantly of Freud and Marx and out of which aesthetic and political views can be generated. We need a moral philosophy in which the concept of love, so rarely mentioned now, can once again be made central.

Every human soul has seen, perhaps before their birth pure forms such as justice, temperance, beauty and all the great moral qualities which we hold in honour. We are moved towards what is good by the faint memory of these forms simple and calm and blessed which we saw once in a pure, clear light being pure ourselves.

Freedom may be a value in politics, but it is not a value in morals.

The exercise of power is a dangerous delight.

Goodness is giving up power and acting upon the world negatively. The good are unimaginable.

How hardening to the heart it must be to do this thing: to change an innocent soaring being into a bundle of struggling rags and pain.

There are moments when, if one rejects the simple and obvious promptings of duty, one finds oneself in a labyrinth of complexities of some quite new kind.

On this planet . . . many things are 'the rule' which are thoroughly evil and pernicious.

He had lived a chaste life really. It was his accusers and not his crimes which troubled him.

When the poor ghosts have gone, what remains are ordinary obligations and ordinary interests. One can live quietly and try to do tiny good things and harm no one.