Quotes About Ethics

Crkva odlican trbuh ima, citave zemlje vec je progutala, a ipak jos se nije prezderala; jedino crkva, gospo i gospodjice draga, moze da svari nezakonita blaga.

There's no difference between one's killing and making decisions that will send others to kill. It's exactly the same thing, or even worse.

Noble birth is an accident of fortune, noble actions characterise the great.

Men and women of integrity understand intrinsically that theirs is the precious right to hold their heads in the sunlight of truth, unashamed before anyone. Embodied within this simple principle and character trait rests the foundational virtue of every person and of every society.

So long as we have more politicians than statesmen, we shall have problems.

That's the test, when all is said and done. Does it persuade one to do good, to rise, to stand tall, to do the right thing, to be kind, to be generous? Then it is of the Spirit of God. If it is dark, sinister, ugly, not good, then you may know that it is of the adversary.

Within us is something of divinity. One who has this knowledge and permits it to influence his life will not stoop to do a mean or cheap or tawdry thing.

Acts of government are not choices between good and bad. They are between two evils – the lesser of two evils. Someone is always going to get hurt by a decision of government . . . absolute morality, absolute ethics just does not exist in affairs of the state.'99

What use is decency when we have been thrust into this peril—treading about without even a corset! Are we to be judged?

Wake him or put a bullet through his brain. No one will protest. Or leave him—but I suggest choosing, my dear. I have learned it is best to be haunted by one's actions rather than one's lack of them.

character doesn't always result in the kind of success one wants.

every little action of the common day makes or unmakes character, and that therefore what one has done in the secret chamber, one has some day to cry aloud from the house-top. I ceased

Why should there be some sort of virtue always attributed to a frank admission of vice?

The minute you start compromising for the sake of massaging somebody's ego, that's it, game over.

Showing oneself eager for office was a sign of being unworthy of it, for the office-seeker probably had selfish views rather than the public good in mind.

If there is a just God, how humanity would writhe in its attempt to justify its treatment of animals.

The fact that man knows right from wrong proves his intellectual superiority to the other creatures; but the fact that he can do wrong proves his moral inferiority to any creature that cannot.

No humane being... will wantonly murder any creature which holds its life by the same tenure that he does.

To insult someone we call him "bestial." For deliberate cruelty and malice, "human" might be the greater insult.

Draft beer, not people.

In general, we have as natural a right to make use of our pens as of our tongue, at our peril, risk, and hazard. I know many books which have bored their readers, but I know of none which has done real evil.

If you don't have this freedom of the press, then all these little fellows are weaseling around and doing their monkey business and they never get caught.

There can be no question of holding forth on ethics. I have seen people behave badly with great morality and I note every day that integrity has no need of rules.

What gown and what head-dress she should wear on the occasion became her chief concern. She cannot be justified in it. Dress is at all times a frivolous distinction, and excessive solicitude about it often destroys its own aim...