Quotes About Ethics

There is no virtue in curiosity. In fact, it might be the most immoral desire a man can possess.

Taint no law on earth dat kin make a man be decent if it aint in 'im.

You may raise enough money to tunnel a mountain, but you cannot raise money enough to hire a man who is minding his own business.

A wise man will not leave the right to the mercy of chance, nor wish it to prevail through the power of the majority.

It is not the business of government to make men virtuous or religious, or to preserve the fool from the consequences of his own folly.

There ought to be more scrupulous honesty in big business men than in any other human relation. For big business requires teamwork on a gigantic scale.

Where there is no law, but every man does what is right in his own eyes, there is the least of real liberty.

A man's ledger does not tell what he is, or what he is worth. Count what is in man, not what is on him, if you would know what he is worth-whether rich or poor.

Good men are not those who now and then do a good act, but men who join one good act to another.

It is truly regrettable that a person will treat a man who is valuable to him well, and a man who is worthless to him poorly.

For never, never, wicked man was wise.

I long for the day when advertising will become a business for a grown man.

There is no right to deny freedom to any object with a mind advanced enough to grasp the concept and desire the state. -(from "The Bicentennial Man) story)

If men are wont to play with swearing anywhere, can we expect they should be serious and strict therein at the bar or in the church.

For himself, then. For his idea of the world, a world in which men do not use shovels to beat corpses into a more convenient shape for processing.

If a man is prodigal, he cannot be truly generous.

It is the man that makes the motive, and not the motive the man.

A man's worth is estimated in this world according to his conduct.

I derive no pleasure from prosecuting a man, even though I know he's guilty; do you think I could sleep at night or look at myself in the mirror in the morning if I hounded an innocent man?

The man who acts never has any conscience; no one has any conscience but the man who thinks

The happiness of man, as well as his dignity, consists in virtue.

Without ethics man has no future. This is to say mankind without them cannot be itself. Ethics determine choices and actions and suggest difficult priorities.

All errors which a man is likely to commit against advice are far outweighed by the evil of allowing others to constrain him for his good.

It is unethical for any man to tax another man's home to fund his social agenda. Friends don't do that, your enemies will.