Quotes About Ethics

when we are comfortable and inattentive, we run the risk of committing grave injustices absentmindedly.

There is a moral obligation, I think, not to ally oneself with power against the powerless.

Paradoxically, a saint like [Albert] Schweitzer can give one a lot more trouble than King Leopold II, villain of unmitigated guilt, because along with doing good and saving African lives Schweitzer also managed to announce that the African was indeed his brother, but only his junior brother.

In such a regime, I say you died a good death if your life had inspired someone to come forward and shoot your murderer in the chest - without asking to be paid.

what kind of democracy can exist side by side with so much corruption and ignorance?

Africa never spared those who did what they liked instead of what they had to do.

Clearly there is no moral obligation to write in any particular way. But there is a moral obligation, I think, not to ally oneself with power against the powerless.

You may cause more trouble by refusing a bribe than by accepting it. Had not a Minister of State said, albeit in an unguarded, alcoholic moment, that the trouble was not in receiving bribes, but in failing to do the thing for which the bribe was given? And if you refuse, how do you know that a "brother" or a "friend" is not receiving on your behalf, having told everyone that he is your agent?

It is not bravery when a man fights with a woman.

I have learned that a man who makes trouble for others is also making it for himself.

A man might pick his way with the utmost care through a crowded market but find that the hem of his cloth had upset and broken another's wares; in such a case the man, not his cloth, was held to repair the damage.

This is one of the negative implications of free. People often don't care as much about things they don't pay for, and as a result they don't think as much about how they consume them. free can encourage gluttony, hoarding, thoughtless consumption, waste, guilt, and greed. We take stuff because it's there, not necessarily because we want it. Charging a price, even a very low price, can encourage much more responsible behavior.

Some are just businessmen.

Supposedly, whatever we do that's selfish goes with us to the grave; whatever we do that's selfless lives on.

It's because I want you to remember that character counts. You can be the best there ever was at something, but if you have no character, what do you have? On the other hand, if you have very little as far as accomplishments but you have character, well, then you're all right in my book.

Jesus was a pacifist.

Human kindness is deeply subversive to totalitarian creeds, which seek to thwart all compassion toward those deemed unworthy of moral consideration, those branded as internal or external enemies.

when human law comes into conflict with what is moral, human law must be defied.

Force," Simone Weil wrote, "is as pitiless to the man who possesses it, or thinks he does, as it is to its victims; the second it crushes, the first it intoxicates."2

They failed to grasp the central Socratic paradox: that it is better to suffer wrong than to do wrong.

Corporate capitalism cannot be reformed. Our strength lies in our steadfastness and our integrity. It lies in our ability to hold fast to our ideals, as well as our willingness to sacrifice for those ideals. We must refuse to cooperate.

A soldier who is able to see the humanity of the enemy makes a troubled and ineffective killer.

Evil when we are in its power is not felt as evil but as a necessity, or even a duty," Simone Weil wrote.

Writing of Ohio megachurch pastor Rod Parsley and his close associate, GOP gubernatorial candidate Ken Blackwell, he says, "[T]he heart of the Christian religion, all that is good and compassionate within it, has been tossed aside, ruthlessly gouged out and thrown into a heap with all the other inner organs. Only the shell, the form, remains. Christianity is of no use to Parsley, Blackwell and the others. In its name they kill it.