Quotes About Ethics

Oh, what times! Oh, what standards!

We steal if we touch tomorrow. It is God's.

When the president does it, that means it is not illegal.

A president's hardest task is not to do what's right, but to know what's right.

I beg leave to assure the Congress that no pecuniary consideration could have tempted me to accept this arduous employment at the expense of my domestic ease and happiness. I do not wish to make any profit from it.

There is honor among thieves.

One must live the way one thinks or end up thinking the way one has lived.

Once to every man and nation comes the moment to decide. ... And the choice goes by forever t'wixt that darkness and that light.

If, after all, men cannot always make history have a meaning, they can always act so that their own lives have one.

Better an ugly face than an ugly mind.

What maintains one vice would bring up two children.

Vice goes a long way tow'rd makin' life bearable. A little vice now an' thin is relished by th' best iv men.

When I religiously confess myself to myself, I find that the best virtue I have has in it some tincture of vice.

He who hates vice hates men.

Nurse one vice in your bosom. Give it the attention it deserves and let your virtues spring up modestly around it. Then you'll have the miser who's no liar; and the drunkard who's the benefactor of a whole city.

It is the function of vice to keep virtue within reasonable grounds.

If individuals have no virtues, their vices may be of use to us.

If you don't want anyone to know it, don't do it.

Vice can be learnt, even without a teacher.

You can't act like a skunk without someone's getting wind of it.

I have my standards. They may be low, but I have them.

I have too much respect for the truth to drag it out on every trifling occasion.

You know what I think about violence. For me it is profoundly moral -more moral than compromises and transactions.

A tragic situation exists precisely when virtue does not triumph but when it is still felt that man is nobler than the forces which destroy him.