Quotes About Ethics

When a man hangs from a tree it doesn't spell justice unless he helped write the law that hanged him.

Were there no desire there would be no virtue, and because one man desires what another does not, who shall say whether the child of his desire be Vice or Virtue?

Men have no right to what is not reasonable, and to what is not for their benefit.

Of this stamp is the cant of, Not men, but measures.

Man acts from adequate motives relative to his interest, and not on metaphysical speculations.

For that which all men then did virtue call, Is now called vice; and that which vice was hight, Is now hight virtue, and so used of all: Right now is wrong, and wrong that was is right

What use of oaths, of promise, or of test, where men regard no God but interest?

Though men now possess the power to dominate and exploit every corner of the natural world, nothing in that fact implies that they have the right or the need to do so.

For this world that men have made, none of us is bad enough. For the world that made us, none is good enough.

I'm a humanist; I'd rather kill a man than a snake.

The man that makes a character, makes foes.

That in the human plan nothing is worth the making if it does not make the man.

There is a natural disposition with us to judge an author's personal character by the character of his works. We find it difficult to understand the common antithesis of a good writer and a bad man.

Man creates both his god and his devil in his own image. His god is himself at his best, and his devil himself at his worst.

A man's looks are measured by the depth of his pockets.

I don't care if a man's theory for tomorrow is correct, I care if his spirit of today is correct.

The whole history of man is continuous proof of the maxim that to divest one's methods of ethical concepts means to sink into the depths of utter demoralization.

The appearance of things to the mind is the standard of every action to man.

How do people come up with a date and a time to take life from another man? Who made them God?

Keep alive the light of justice, And much that men say in blame will pass you by.

The gifts of bad men bring no good with them.

The gift of a bad man can bring no good.

Apologists for the profession contend that lawyers are as honest as other men, but this is not very encouraging.

If vices were profitable, the virtuous man would be the sinner.