Quotes About Ethics

It is the nature of the wise to resist pleasures, but the foolish to be a slave to them.

In goodness there are all kinds of wisdom.

Wages is a cunning device of the devil, for the benefit of tender consciences, who would retain all the advantages of the slave system, without the expense, trouble, and odium of being slave-holders.

The complete irresponsibility of man for his actions and his nature is the bitterest drop which he who understands must swallow.

Vices are their own punishment

Stand with anybody that stands right, stand with him while he is right and part with him when he goes wrong.

Do not expect justice where might is right.

Indeed, good is not good if one does not suffer in doing it.

Your conscience is the measure of the honesty of your selfishness. Listen to it carefully.

When wisdom reaches the acme of perfection, it will suppress the vicious instincts and injurious desires.

Conscience is God present in man.

To be a virtuous person is to display, by acts of will, all or at least most of the six ubiquitous virtues: wisdom, courage, humanity, justice, temperance, and transcendence.

Man needs now no more degrees, but character, No more study, but wisdom.

A wise man will desire no more than what he may get justly, use soberly, distribute cheerfully, and leave contently.

To bring deserving things down by setting undeserving things up is one of its perverted delights; and there is no playing fast and loose with the truth, in any game, without growing the worse for it.

True happiness flows from the possession of wisdom and virtue and not from the possession of external goods.

When you see a good man, try to emulate his example, and when you see a bad man, search yourself for his faults.

There's no right. There's no wrong. There's only popular opinion.

No doubt those who really founded modern science were usually those whose love of truth exceeded their love of power.

As a calf follows its mother among a thousand cows, so the (good or bad) deeds of a man follow him.

The civilized man has a moral obligation to be skeptical, to demand the credentials of all statements that claim to be facts.

Wisdom, humanity & courage, these three are universal virtues. The way by which they are practiced are one.

I would beseech you not only to be pure beyond suspicion but I would ask you to combine with stainless purity, great wisdom and great ability.

There is nothing divine about morality, it is a purely human affair.