Quotes About Ethics

Never trust a man who says he is only a little crooked, and that the crookedness is exercised in your interest.

If we put corrupt men in public office and sneeringly acquiesce in their corruptions, then we are wrong ourselves.

Avoid the base hypocrisy of condemning in one man what you pass over in silence when committed by another.

Some men can live up to their loftiest ideals without ever going higher than a basement.

By the divine providence [animals] are intended for man's use... Hence it is not wrong for man to make use of them, either by killing or in any other way whatsoever.

If a man deliberately abstains from wine to such an extent that he does serious harm to his nature, he will not be free from blame.

A man's conscience and his judgment is the same thing; and as the judgment, so also the conscience, may be erroneous.

No man is bound by the words themselves, either to kill himselfe, or any other man.

God grant that men of principle shall be our principal men.

Every honest man will suppose honest acts to flow from honest principles, and the rogues may rail without intermission.

The moral sense, or conscience, is as much part of a man as his leg or arm. It is given to all in a stronger or weaker degree.. It may be strengthened by exercise.

The moral sense is the first excellence of well-organized man.

Fill the seats of justice with good men, not so absolute in goodness as to forget what human frailty is.

No flattery, boy! an honest man cannot live by it; it is a little, sneaking art, which knaves use to cajole and soften fools withal.

Every religion is good that teaches man to be good; and I know of none that instructs him to be bad.

To politicize a man's tragic death is about as low as you can go, isn't it?

Justice is the constant and perpetual will to allot to every man his due.

If men were basically evil, who would bother to improve the world instead of giving it up as a bad job at the outset?

To go behind a man's hall-door is mean, cowardly, unfair opposition.

The man who is wise enough to know the right thing to do, who is good enough to wish to do only the right thing, and who is able and strong enough to do the right thing is a truly great man.

The shallow, as intimated, consider liberty a release from all law, from every constraint. The wise see in it, on the contrary, the potent Law of Laws.

Neither does man have gills for living in a water environment; yet it is not sinful to explore the depths of the oceans in search of food or other blessings.

Many laws as certainly make men bad, as bad men make many laws.

A man's life is always dealing with permanence, that is the most dangerous kind of irresponsibility is to think of your doings as temporary.