Quotes About Ethics

If you don't stand for something, you'll fall for anything.

The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who, in a period of moral crisis, maintain their neutrality.

The principle of neutrality ... has increasingly become an obsolete conception, and, except under very special circumstances, it is an immoral and shortsighted conception.

The accomplice to the crime of corruption is frequently our own indifference.

The integrity of men is to be measured by their conduct, not by their professions.

Some statesmen go to Congress and some go to jail. It is the same thing, after all.

To rejoice in conquest is to rejoice in murder.

Conscience is a cur that will let you get past it but that you cannot keep from barking.

Conscience is but a word that cowards use, Devised at first to keep the strong in awe.

Conscience reigns but it does not govern.

A man's vanity tells him what is honour; a man's conscience what is justice.

Shame arises from the fear of man; conscience from the fear of God.

The only incorruptible thing about us.

Liberty of conscience (when people have consciences) is rightly considered the most indispensable of liberties.

If the chief party, whether it be the people, or the army, or the nobility, which you think most useful and of most consequence to you for the conservation of your dignity, be corrupt, you must follow their humor and indulge them, and in that case honesty and virtue are pernicious.

Life is the acceptance of responsibilities, or their evasion; it is a business of meeting obligations, or avoiding them.

I have often though morality may perhaps consist solely in the courage of making a choice.

A cowardly act! What do I care about that? You may be sure that I should never fear to commit one if it were to my advantage.

The number of malefactors authorizes not the crime.

The faults of the burglar are the qualities of the financier.

The study of crime begins with the knowledge of oneself.

Fear succeeds crime - it is its punishment.

All punishment is mischief. All punishment in itself is evil.

If England treats her criminals the way she has treated me, she doesn't deserve to have any.