Quotes About Ethics

All creatures come into the world bringing with them the memory of justice. But we live in a world of laws, a world of the second-best. There is nothing we can do about that. We are fallen creatures. All we can do is to uphold the laws, all of us, without allowing the memory of justice to fade.

La culpa y la salvación son abstracciones. Yo no actúo de acuerdo con meras abstracciones.

The crime that is latent in us we must inflict on ourselves, I say. I nod and nod, driving the message home. Not on others, I say.

Ponekad se pitam, re?e, kako bi bilo da Božja stvorenja nemaju sna. Kad bismo ?itav život provodili budni, da li bi nas to u?inilo boljim ljudima ili gorim?

Es posible, pero hay consideraciones superiores a obedecer la ley, imperativos superiores. –Ah, ¿sí? No lo sabía. Gracias, pero a mí me basta con la ley.

Laws are made for one purpose only (...) to hold us in check when our desires grow immoderate. As long as our desires are moderate we have no need of laws.

Sin embargo, y regreso a mi primera pregunta, ¿acaso es bueno que el imperio de la ley no conceda excepciones? Si la ley se aplica sin excepciones, ¿qué lugar queda para la compasión?

Qué le da a un desconocido, a un hombre que no la vio en su vida, el derecho a ponerse una toga escarlata y decir: «Una vida entera de encierro, ese es el valor de su vida»? O bien: «Veinticinco años en las minas de sal». ¡No tiene ningún sentido! ¡Hay crímenes que no se pueden medir!

Others in the ancient world who denounced usury include Plato, Moses, Muhammad, Aristotle and Buddha. When a line-up like that is in agreement, it is perhaps worth thinking twice about our acceptance of it.

If you were to force people to do something against their free choice, you would be dehumanizing them. The option of forcing everyone to go to heaven is immoral, because it's dehumanizing; it strips them of the dignity of making their own decision; it denies them their freedom of choice; and it treats them as a means to an end. When God allows people to say 'no' to him, he actually respects and dignifies them.

the degree of someone's just punishment is not a function of how long it took to commit the deed; rather, it's a function of how severe the deed itself was.

Quick question. Does this magical skill with gray matter come with a total lack of compunction for your kind, or is it just you who were born without a conscience? V: I beg your pardon?

Bad deeds like beauty, are in the eye of the beholder.

The righteous do not always do right, but their souls remain pure.

When I picked up the bird and felt its light weight in my hands, I realized that carelessness was a form of cruelty. See, I'd always told myself that because I meant no harm, anything that happened wasn't my fault. At that moment, though, I knew I was wrong. If I hadn't given the female my gun, the bird wouldn't have been shot. I was responsible even though I didn't pull the trigger.

The bottom line is...if you were in the civilian population, you'd be a serial killer. Working for the government means you get to wave the American flag around when it suits you, but the truth is, you do what you do because you enjoy picking the wings off of flies. And everybody's an insect in your eyes.

Thou Shalt Not Mack on Your Patients

Probably played a lot of World of Warcraft or whatever it was—and that made him forget that if you were going to be a bigoted big-mouth, you'd better be able to back shit up.

now he knew why God didn't give people superpowers. Humans were dangerous enough as it was. . .

When you were contemplating cheating on your mate, it was not easy on the conscience. And not something you wanted to do in the home you shared with her.

The outcome was moral even if the method was not. And sometimes that was the best you could do.

Thou Shalt Not Mack on Your Patients" part of the Hippocratic oath. Especially

Keep your hands to yourself, Adrian." God knew the angel seemed willing to fuck anything that moved—which made you wonder if not moving would be a rate-limiting step for him. With a curse, Adrian went all holier-than-thou. "I only touch if they ask." "What a relief." "But you know, reanimation is possible.

Good and bad have never been more relative terms than when applied to the likes of you. But I agree with her. To me, you have always been a hero.