Quotes About Ethics

Man is a moral being.

When any man accumulates more than he can earn with his own hands, he begins to enrich himself at the expense of the youth, the sweat, the blood, the joy of his fellow men.

Fie on possession, But if a man be vertuous withal.

If a man is indolent, let him be poor. If he is drunken, let him be poor.... Also--somewhat inconsistently--blessed are the poor!

What a man is depends on his character; but what he does, and what we think of what he does, depends on his circumstances.

When it comes to the point, really bad men are just as rare as really good ones.

Have you no morals, man?' 'Can't afford them,Governor.

It is not true that men can be divided into absolutely honest persons and absolutely dishonest ones. Our honesty varies with the strain put on it.

A man's behaviour may be quite harmless and even beneficial, when he ismorally behaving like a scoundrel. And he may do great harm when he is morally acting on the highest principles.

HIGGINS. Have you no morals, man? DOOLITTLE [unabashed] Cant afford them, Governor. Neither could you if you was as poor as me.

Thus, I blush to add, you can not be a philosopher and a good man, though you may be a philosopher and a great one.

The salvation of the world depends on the men who will not take evil good-humouredly, and whose laughter destroys the fool instead of encouraging him.

Virtue is not malicious; wrong done her Is righted even when men grant they err.

There is no general doctrine which is not capable of eating out our morality if unchecked by the deep-seated habit of direct fellow-feeling with individual fellow-men.

The yoke a man creates for himself by wrong-doing will breed hate in the kindliest nature.

To men who only aim at escaping felony, nothing short of the prisoner's dock is disgrace.

It is my firm conviction that man has nothing to gain, emotionally or otherwise, by adhering to a falsehood, regardless of how comfortable or sacred that falsehood may appear.

Lie not, neither to thyself, nor man, nor God. Let mouth and heart be one; beat and speak together, and make both felt in action. It is for cowards to lie.

Hee wrongs not an old man that steales his supper from him.

Keep not ill men company, lest you increase the number.

God chooses that men should be tried, but let a man beware of tempting his neighbor.

Explain to me why it is more noble to kill ten thousand men in battle than a dozen at dinner.

You kill men for the wrongs they have done, not the wrongs that they may do someday.

...the man who passes the sentence should swing the sword." "...a ruler who hides behind paid executioners soon forgets what death is.