Quotes About Ethics

Will do cop work for sex? - It's become my daily mantra.

In the real world of good and evil, good doesn't have a party if they've got a reason to think evil might try to crash.

How do you know that? You couldn't have finished the book." "I skipped to the end." "You…" He closed his eyes as he drank more wine. "Some things are unforgivable

when you have politics, you have corruption." "Possibly.

I rarely do business with wankers.

The law doesn't always stand for the innocent and used. The law doesn't always care enough. I won't apologize for what I did, Eve, but I will for putting you in the position of choosing between me and your duty.

It's rare in war for either side to consider the innocent." Why

You continue to not be and asshole, Kyung. I do my best to maintain that benchmark.

Money without honor is a disease. BALZAC

politics?" "A necessary evil that on rare occasions works without corruption, abuse, and waste.

By action, by omission of action, people sacrifice other people all the damn time.

Yeah, okay, that's how I was leaning. I thought about Oberon, how she ran her department, all those cops—and used her handpicked to run her dirty cop sideline.

Do you wonder, ever, what makes a person capable of taking a life when there's no threat to his own or another? What makes them end life, and so often, so very often, with real cruelty, even with pleasure.

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.

I'm sorry, my child, I just find it hard to whip up an interest in the subject. It's admirable, what you do, what she does, but to me animal-welfare people are a bit like Christians of a certain kind. Everyone is so cheerful and well-intentioned that after a while you itch to go off and do some raping and pillaging. Or to kick a cat.

No consciousness that we would recognize as consciousness. Not awareness, as far as we can make out, of a self with a history. What I mind is what tends to come next. They have no consciousness therefore. Therefore what? Therefore we are free to use them for our own ends Therefore we are free to kill them? Why? What is so special about the form of consciousness that we recognize that makes killing a bearer of it a crime while killing an animal goes unpunished?

She is no longer sure that people are always improved by what they read. Furthermore, she is not sure that writers who venture into the darker territories of the soul always return unscathed.

Decency: the inexplicable: the ground of all ethics. Things we do not do. We do not stare when the soul leaves the body, but veil our eyes with tears or cover them with our hands. We do not stare at scars, which are places where the soul has struggled to leave and been forced back, closed up, sewn in.

Why has he taken this job?... For the sake of the dogs? But the dogs are dead; and what do dogs know of honour and dishonour anyway? 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.

When did a sheep last die of old age? Sheep do not own themselves, do not own their lives. They exist to be used, every last ounce of them, their flesh to be eaten, their bones to be crushed and fed to poultry. Nothing escapes, except perhaps the gall bladder, which no one will eat. Descartes should have thought of that. The soul, suspended in the dark, bitter gall, hiding.

Besonders rätselhaft ist die Frage, in welchem historischen Zeitalter wir leben: in einem puritanischen oder einem freizügigen. ....Einerseits haben Eltern nichts dagegen einzuwenden, wenn ihre sechzehnjährige Tochter einen Jungen zum Übernachten mit nach Hause bringt. Vielleicht bieten sie sogar den beiden am nächsten Morgen Frühstück an. Andererseits wird ein Erwachsener, der am Strand ein Foto von einem Kind im Badeanzug macht, ins Gefängnis gesteckt.

Diese Haltung zur Opferung von Menschenleben ist seltsam. Militärbefehlshaber überlegen nicht zweimal, wenn sie Soldaten in die Schlacht schicken und dabei genau wissen, dass viele von ihnen sterben werden. [...] Andererseits verbietet es der Offiziersethos, einzelne Soldaten auszuwählen und ihnen zu befehlen, ihr Leben zu opfern [...]. Und doch - und das ist noch paradoxer - werden Soldaten, die eine solche Tat aus eigener Initiative vollbringen, als Helden betrachtet.

The filth of village; honestly acquired.

A good person. Not a bad resolution to make, in dark times.