Quotes About Ethics

There was neither time nor desire to consider moral or ethical issues. Every man wad controlled by one thought only: to keep himself alive for the family waiting for him at home, and to save his friends. With no hesitation, therefore, he would arrange for another prisoner, another "number," to take his place in the transport.

Insofar as a sacrifice is calculated, performed after careful reckoning of the prospects of its bringing about a desired end, it loses all ethical significance. Real sacrifice occurs only when we run the risk of having sacrificed in vein. Would anyone maintain that a person who plunges into the water to save someone has acted less ethically, or unethically, because both are drowned?

El hombre es ese ser capaz de inventar las cámaras de gas de Auschwitz, pero también es el ser que ha entrado en esas mismas cámaras con la cabeza erguida y el Padrenuestro o el Shemá Israel en los labios.

I recommend that the Statue of Liberty on the East Coast be supplemented by a Statue of Responsibility on the West Coast.

Freedom is only part of the story and half of the truth. Freedom is but the negative aspect of the whole phenomenon whose positive aspect is responsibleness.

Freedom, however, is not the last word. Freedom is only part of the story and half of the truth. Freedom is but the negative aspect of the whole phenomenon whose positive aspect is responsibleness.

It is, therefore, up to the patient to decide whether he should interpret his life task as being responsible to society or to his own conscience. There are people, however, who do not interpret their own lives merely in terms of a task assigned to them but also in terms of the taskmaster who has assigned it to them.

T]he danger never lies in a technique in itself, but solely in the spirit in which the technique is applied and handled.

I was trying to tell her that, if she found herself in a situation where she could save her life only at the price of yielding sexually, she should not feel inhibited out of any consideration for me. By giving her, so to speak, an absolution in advance, I was hoping to spare myself the guilt if such an inhibition might lead to her death.

So conscience is essentially intuitive. To anticipate what is not yet, but is to be made real, conscience must be based on intuition. And it is in this sense that conscience may be called irrational.

A state that is already economically so badly off that it relies on eliminating the relatively insignificant percentage of its incurable citizens in order to save on [resources] -such a state has already reached the end economically.

There is no conceivable human condition in which man may be relieved of the tension between what he has done and, on the other hand, what he must yet do or should have done.

daß niemand das Recht hat, Unrecht zu tun, auch der nicht, der Unrecht erlitten hat.

About conscience - sense of right / wrong) No one will be able to make us believe that man is a sublimated animal once we can show that within him there is a repressed angel.

And just as the animal is at times misled by the vital instincts, so may man go astray... whereas the ethical instinct alone enables him to discover the unique requirement of a unique situation

I cannot be guilty of something that other people have done, even if it is my parents or grandparents.

Worshipping technique at the expense of encounter involves making man not only a mere thing, but also a mere means to an end.

Danger only threatens when a political system sends those not-decent people, i.e., the negative element of a nation, to the top.

Niekas neturi teisÄ—s elgtis neteisingai, net ir tas, kuris pats neteisybÄ™ patyrÄ—.

Freedom is part of the story and half of the truth. Being free is but the negative aspect of the whole phenomenon whose positive aspect is being responsible. Freedom may degenerate into mere arbitrariness unless it is lived in terms of responsibleness.

On the average, only those prisoners could keep alive who, after years of trekking from camp to camp, had lost all scruples in their fight for existence; they were prepared to use every means, honest and other- wise, even brutal force, theft, and betrayal of their friends, in order to save themselves. We who have come back, by the aid of many lucky chances or miracles—whatever one may choose to call them—we know: the best of us did not return.

From all this we may learn that there are two races of men in this world, but only these two—the "race" of the decent man and the "race" of the indecent man. Both are found everywhere; they penetrate into all groups of society. No group consists entirely of decent or indecent people

To have a good conscience can never be the basis of a morally good existence; it is, rather, the result.

Peace of mind is not a purpose but a result of our ethical behavior.