Quotes About Ethics

Of course it's not enough to be a good man to be an effective ruler and it never has been.

The man who passes the sentence should swing the sword. Look her in the eyes before you kill her. See her tears, hear her last words. You owe her that much at least." - Eddard Stark

...Ned always said that the man who passes the sentence should swing the blade, though he never took any joy in the duty. But I would, oh, yes.

God knows I'm no saint, but I don't think I'm more of a sinner than any other man.

To say that a man is an idealist is merely to say that he is a man.

We ought to be interested in that darkest and most real part of a man in which dwell not the vices that he does not display, but the virtues that he cannot.

There is a case for telling the truth; there is a case for avoiding the scandal; but there is no possible defense for the man who tells the scandal, but does not tell the truth

Men may keep a sort of level of good, but no man has ever been able to keep on one level of evil.

The man who says, 'my country right or wrong' is like the man who says, 'my mother drunk or sober'

I believe in our side and theirs, with the good and evil decided after the fact, by those who survive. Among men you seldom find the good with one standard and the shadow with another.

If man is not special, if he's not deeply different from any other thing, then there's no good reason not to treat him just like any other thing when it's convenient for us to do so.

The world is full of guys. Be a man. Don't be a guy

It is better that a guilty man should not be brought to trial than that he should be acquitted.

We must judge of a man's motives from his overt acts.

A man can be trusted only up to low-water mark.

He was a man of his times. with one virtue and a thousand crimes. (The Corsair)

Kill a man's family, and he may brook it, But keep your hands out of his breeches' pocket.

Why kill good people just to get a bad man?

When a man refuses to take money from those who give money to politicians, you don't pay the piper and sit back and let somebody else call the tune.

Our errors and our controversies, in the sphere of morality, arise sometimes from looking on men as though they could be altogether bad, or altogether good.

Learn to overrule minor interest in favor of great ones, and generously to do all the good the heart prompts; a man is never injured by acting virtuously.

No body of men can be said to authorize a man to act as their agent, to the injury of a third person.

Jesus never instructed men to do what was right because it was right; yet this is the true reason why they should do it.

The law does not require a man to cease to be a man, and act without regard to consequences, when he becomes a juror.