Quotes About Ethics

Thus it was with the men of rank, on whom their eminent position imposed the guardianship of the public morals.

The weaknesses and defects, the bad passions, the mean tendencies, and the moral diseases which lead to crime are handed down from one generation to another, by a far surer process of transmission than human law has been able to establish in respect to the riches and honors which it seeks to entail upon posterity.

Thus Ethan Brand become a fiend. He began to be so from the moment that his moral nature had ceased to keep the pace of improvement with his intellect. And now, as his highest effort and inevitable development -- as the bright and gorgeous flower, and rich, delicious fruit of his life's labor -- had had produced the Unpardonable Sin!

Thus Ethan Brand become a fiend. He began to be so from the moment that his moral nature had ceased to keep the pace of improvement with his intellect. And now, as his highest effort and inevitable development -- as the bright and gorgeous flower, and rich, delicious fruit of his life's labor -- he had produced the Unpardonable Sin!

Homeless as he had been,-continually changing his whereabout,and,therefore,responsible neither to public opinion nor to individuals,-putting off one exterior, and snatching up another, to be soon shifted for a third,-he had never violated the innermost man but had carried his conscience along with him.

the wrong-doing of one generation lives into the successive ones, and, divesting itself of every temporary advantage, becomes a pure and uncontrollable mischief;

En cuanto a Rappaccini, se dice de él que cuida más a la ciencia que a la humanidad, y yo, que le conozco bien, puedo responder de la verdad que tal afirmación.

dismal severity of the Puritanic code of law, which

It may have been true that from a strictly legal standpoint there was nothing wrong with how Winslow and the other Plymouth officials acquired large amounts of Pokanoket land. And yet, from a practical and moral standpoint, the process removed the Indians from their territory as effectively—and as cheaply—as driving them off at gunpoint

Everybody has to die. I prefer to die for a crime I have committed rather than to die for one of the crimes which you have committed.

Revolutionary men with principles were not really different from the rest. They used their cleverness to get, in return for principles, what other men buy with their money.

I now knew that all of us were prostitutes who sold themselves at varying prices, and that an expensive prostitute was better than a cheap one.

Ako se neko u vasem drustvu ubije pistoljem clanovi njegove porodice gube pravo na osiguranje. Ako on to ucini cigaretama ne gube pravo. Ako vam lekar pomogne u samoubistvu, to se naziva ubistvom, a ako vam to ucini duvanska kompanija, to se naziva trgovinom.

What he's really saying is: Please be a human being. With a life so full of rules and regiments, it's so easy to forget that's what they are. She knows—she sees—how often compassion takes a back seat to expediency.

But remember that good intentions pave many roads. Not all of them lead to hell.

The end doesn't always justify the means. But sometimes it does. Wisdom is knowing the difference.

I was asking if unwinding kills you, or if it leaves you alive somehow. C'mon—it's not like we haven't thought about it. (...) What do you think, Connor? asks Hayden. What hap­pens to your soul when you get unwound? Who says I even got one? For the sake of argument, let's say you do. Who says I want an argument?

How can you do the right thing when you can't figure out what that is? When all you have before you are choices in various shades of wrong?

Which is worse, Risa often wondered, to have tens of thousands of babies that no one wanted or to silently make then go away before they were even born

Tools are neither demonic nor divine. It's all about who wields them.

Therin lies the paradox of the profession,' Faraday said. 'Those who wish to have the job should not have it...and those who would most refuse to kill are the only ones who should.

if more people had been organ donors, unwinding never would have happened...but people like to keep what's theirs, even after they're dead.

Would you rather die, or be unwound?

Grief is not an excuse for depravity.