Quotes About Ethics

Wasn't that the definition of adulthood? That you wanted one thing, but did another because you knew what was right and good, and wanted to do the right and the good more than you wanted to do what you wanted.

You really are playing God." "I most certainly am not playing.

was good enough when good men held the office, but always when you create an office that a man can lay hands on, an evil man will someday lay hands on it.

Blamelessness does not relieve us of responsibility

A man who embraces the voice of evil when it whispers in his ear is no less evil than the whisperer.

He was the most dangerous of men, because, in his actions, he saw only good. He saw himself as a hero.

Are there any who can honestly boast, My worshippers obey my good laws, And treat each other kindly, And live simple generous lives?

We're businessmen, Chubs. The moral high ground is wherever we set it.

When you don't understand the consequences for your acts, how can you be blamed for them?

Morality is simply the attitude we adopt towards people we personally dislike.

Hear no evil, speak no evil, and you won't be invited to cocktail parties.

I like persons better than principles, and I like persons with no principles better than anything else in the world.

I hope you have not been leading a double life, pretending to be wicked and being good all the time. That would be hypocrisy.

Patriotism is the virtue of the vicious

When we are happy, we are always good, but when we are good, we are not always happy.

I have learned this: it is not what one does that is wrong, but what one becomes as a consequence of it.

And what sort of lives do these people, who pose as being moral, lead themselves? My dear fellow, you forget that we are in the native land of the hypocrite.

Scandal is gossip made tedious by morality.

It is better to be beautiful then to be good, but it is better to be good then to be ugly.

Conscience and cowardice are really the same things, Basil. Conscience is the trade-name of the firm. That is all.

Morality, like art, means drawing a line someplace.

I want to be good. I can't bear the idea of my soul being hideous.

Cheap editions of great books may be delightful, but cheap editions of great men are absolutely detestable

because to influence a person is to give one's own soul.