Quotes About Ethics

The prevention of evil will always require more than desirable social arrangements: it will forever require personal self-control and the conscious limitation of appetites.

We should remember that there are few pleasures greater than promoting your moral enthusiasms at other people's expense.

ideological aim: to subvert the very concept and deny the possibility of virtue, and therefore of the necessity for restraint.

There are few illicit pleasures greater than that of causing pain to others for their own, or some higher, good.

A curious reversal in the locus of moral concern has taken place: people feel responsible for everything except for what they do.

compassion being measured by the amount of other people's money you are prepared to pay for the supposed resolution of a social problem.

what matter it if a man gaineth the whole world and loseth his own soul?

The best politics for any president is to be a good president.

My basic principle is that you don't make decisions because they are easy you don't make them because they are cheap you don't make them because they're popular you make them because *they're right*.

All of us are experts at practicing virtue at a distance.

The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.

No man is justified in doing evil on the ground of expedience.

No man is above the law and no man below it.

I recognize the right and duty of this generation to develop and use our natural resources, but I do not recognize the right to waste them, or rob by wasteful use, the generations that come after us.

No man is above the law and no man is below it; nor do we ask any man's permission when we ask him to obey it

I recognize the right and duty of this generation to develop and use our natural resources, but I do not recognize the right to waste them, or to rob by wasteful use, the generations that come after us.

When they call the roll in the Senate, the Senators do not know whether to answer "Present" or "Not Guilty.

In any situation, the best thing you can do is the right thing; the next best thing you can do is the wrong thing; the worst thing you can do is nothing.

Knowing what's right doesn't mean much unless you do what's right.

No man is above the law and no man is below it; nor do we ask any man's permission when we require him to obey it. Obedience of the law is demanded; not asked as a favor.

The men with the muckrakes are often indispensable to the well-being of society, but only if they know when to stop raking the muck, and to look upward to the celestial crown above them…. If they gradually grow to feel that the whole world is nothing but muck their power of usefulness is gone.

Some men can live up to their loftiest ideals without ever going higher than a basement.

A man who has never gone to school may steal from a freight car; but if he has a university education, he may steal the whole railroad.