Quotes About Ethics

A trader is a man who earns what he gets and does not give or take the undeserved.

A few honest men are better than numbers.

Let no guilty man escape, if it can he avoided. . . . No personal consideration should stand in the way of performing a public duty.

There is no better proof of a man's being truly good than his desiring to be constantly under the observation of good men.

Good education is not regeneration. Education may chain up men's lusts, but cannot change their hearts.

To be good, and do good, is the whole duty of man comprised in a few words.

Man is, beyond dispute, the most excellent of created beings, and the vilest animal is a dog; but the sages agree that a grateful dog is better than an ungrateful man.

The wrongdoer is more unfortunate than the man wronged.

No public man can be just a little crooked. There is no such thing as a no-man's land between honesty and dishonesty.

Law is twofold -- natural and written. The natural law is in the heart, the written law on tables. All men are under the natural law.

One should judge a man mainly from his depravities. Virtues can be faked. Depravities are real.

Heaven and hell suppose two distinct species of men, the good and the bad. But the greatest part of mankind float betwixt vice and virtue.

A politician is a man who will double cross that bridge when he comes to it.

Any alleged 'right' of one man, which necessitates the violation of the rights of another, is not and cannot be a right.

I try to act as a man of character if no one is watching or if the world is watching.

We cannot have two hearts, one for the animals and one for men. In cruelty towards the former and cruelty to the latter there is no difference but in the victim.

What each man feared would happen to himself, did not trouble him when he saw that it would ruin another.

It is not because men's desires are strong that they act ill; it is because their consciences are weak.

How can land be owned by another man. Warns one can not steal what was given as a gift. Is the sky owned by birds and the rivers owned by fish.

Aristotle said that some people were only fit to be slaves. I do not contradict him. But I reject slavery because I see no men fit to be masters.

The experience of ages has shown that a man who works on the land is purer, nobler, higher, and more moral... Agriculture should be at the basis of everything. That's my idea.

It has now become the doctrine of a large clan of politicians that political honesty is unnecessary, slow, subversive of a man's interests, and incompatible with quick onward movement.

There are two freedoms - the false, where a man is free to do what he likes; the true, where he is free to do what he ought.

Necessity makes an honest man a knave.