Quotes About Ethics

What man is a man who does not make the world better.

The Pythagoreans degrade impious men into brutes and, if one is to believe Empedocles, even into plants.

But for disloyalty to her husband a wife is censured among men, and ,in her next life she is born in the womb of a jackal and tormented by diseases, the punishment of her sin.

The determined scholar and the man of virtue will not seek to live at the expense of injuring their virtue. They will even sacrifice their lives to preserve their virtue complete.

Character lives in a man, reputation outside of him.

He who attends to his greater self becomes a great man, and he who attends to his smaller self becomes a small man.

The generality of men are naturally apt to be swayed by fear rather than reverence, and to refrain from evil rather because of the punishment that it brings than because of its own foulness.

Justice is a contract of expediency, entered upon to prevent men harming or being harmed.

No man is clever enough to know all the evil he does.

No man loses ever on a lower level by magnanimity on a higher.

In a society of criminals, the innocent man goes to jail.

A good man may fall, but he falls like a ball [and rebounds]; the ignoble man falls like a lump of clay.

Make yourself an honest man, and then you may be sure there is one less rascal in the world.

All men are born good.

When I need to identify rebels, I look for men with principles

Where there is a man who does not labor because another is compelled to work for him, there slavery is.

There are other measures of self-respect for a man, than the number of clean shirts he puts on every day.

But men are so full of greed today, they'll sell anything for a little piece of money.

I could never think well of a man's intellectual or moral character, if he was habitually unfaithful to his appointments.

As long as man eats animals how can cruelty to animals be removed.

It is infinitely easier to suffer in obedience to a human command than to accept suffering as free, responsible men.

I do not know what the heart of a rascal may be, but I know what is in the heart of an honest man; it is horrible.

To speak well of a base man is much the same as speaking ill of a good man.

Look-ye, 'tis my Opinion, ev'ry Man cheats in his Way. And he is only honest, who is not discover'd.