Quotes About Ethics

But my eagerness to sacrifice little children in order to save mankind is wearing thin.

Don't we all manipulate people? Even if we openly ask them to make a choice, don't we try to frame it so they'll choose as we think they should?

My husband is a good man, she said. It's important to him to be a good man. He has to not only be good, he has to believe that he's good. In the eyes of God, in my eyes, in his parents' eyes, in his own eyes. Good.

No system works well unless good people do their jobs with integrity, and then almost any system works well enough.

Most scientists believe in God," said Sel. "Certainly most of us here.

Val," said Mother, "goodness trumps greatness any day." "Not in the history books," said Valentine. "Then the wrong people are writing history, aren't they?" said Father.

I would rather be mocked for doing a good thing than to be respected, knowing I have done wrong.

What the world is seeing is that the savior of the world has a little problem – he kills children.

No greatness, then.' 'Val,' said Mother, 'goodness trumps greatness any day.' 'Not in the history books,' said Valentine. 'Then the wrong people are writing history, aren't they?' said Father.

Not that science is particularly pure, except compared to politics.

They came for gossip, and he gives them responsibility.

Pacifism only works with an enemy that can't bear to do murder against the innocent.

In wartime, commanders have always had to learn the concept of "acceptable losses." But those who keep their humanity never really accept the idea of acceptability

Any animal is willing to kill in order to save itself.' 'Any animal is willing to kill the Other,' said Ender. 'But the higher beings include more and more living things within their self-story, until at last there is no Other. Until the needs of others are more important than any private desires. The highest beings of all are the ones who are willing to pay any personal cost for the good of those who need them.

when everybody believes that everybody's actions are the result of free choice, and takes and gives responsibility accordingly, the result is civilization.

Nobody wants xenocide, but if it happens, I want to make sure it's the other guys that disappear. When it comes to war, human is human and alien is alien. All that ramen business goes up in smoke when we're talking about survival.

And I began to suspect that the ultimate sacrifice isn't death after all; the ultimate sacrifice is willingly bearing the fullest penalty for your own actions.

You don't represent all humankind. You're about to fight a war with other humans. So how can you say that our wars are evil and your wars are good?' Surely Pizarro, for all his shortcomings, had an easier time of it with Atahualpa

Conservar la dignidad y mostrar respeto donde es debido, para que la derrota no sea una deshonra.

Are great men ever really good? I know they can be, but we judge them by a different standard. Greatness changes them, whatever they were to start with. It's like war—does any war ever settle anything? But we can't judge that way. The test of a war isn't whether it solved things. You have to ask, Was fighting the war better than not fighting it? And I guess the same kind of test ought to be used on great men.

Ender conocía las reglas nunca dichas de la guerra entre hombres, aunque sólo tuviera seis años. Estaba prohibido golpear al oponente caído indefenso en el suelo; sólo un animal lo haría. Precisamente por eso se acercó al cuerpo inerme de Stilson y le dio otra parada en las costillas, con saña.

A person is what he says and does; that's how you learn whether his reputation was earned or manufactured.

Don't we all manipulate people? Even if we openly ask them to make a choice, don't we try to frame it so they'll choose as we think they should?

Even if there is no such thing as free will, we have to treat each other as if there were free will in order to live together in society.