Quotes About Ethics

The justice system can't be totally free of lies and distortion; after all, courts are chock-full of lawyers.

Sometimes I think about dying. And then I wonder about going to hell. And then I think that if and when I go there, the place will be completely organized and run by lost souls, with a council and a works committee and an ethics panel, and I'll feel right at home.

Many things lawful are not expedient, but nothing can be truly expedient which is unlawful or sinful.

Genuine goodness is threatening to those at the opposite end of the moral spectrum.

Gene police! You! Out of the pool, now!

I was raised thinking that moral and ethical standards are universals that apply equally to everyone. And these values aren't easily compatible with the kind of religion that posits a Creator. To my way of thinking, an omnipotent being who sets up a universe in which thinking beings proliferate, grow old, and die (usually in agony, alone, and in fear) is a cosmic sadist.

Politics is shit; it corrupts everything it touches...

Anything for Human Rights is constitutional.

Real integrity stays in place whether the test in adversity or prosperity.

Remember that reputation and integrity are your most valuable assets—and can be lost in a heartbeat.

Although the legal and ethical definitions of right are the antithesis of each other, most writers use them as synonyms. They confuse power with goodness, and mistake law for justice.

To know who I am is a species of knowing where I stand. My identity is defined by the commitments and identifications which provide the frame or horizon within which I can try to determine from case to case what is good, or valuable, or what ought to be done, or what I endorse or oppose. In other words, it is the horizon within which I am capable of taking a stand.

Following one good to the end may be catastrophic, not because it isn't a good, but because there are others which can't be sacrificed without evil.

From a legal perspective, illegal communication behavior also is unethical, but that which is not specifically illegal is ethical. In

Some of you read with me 40 years ago a portion of Aristotle's Ethics, a selection of passages that describe his idea of happiness. You may not remember too well.

The last part, the part you're now approaching, was for Aristotle the most important for happiness.

As we seek what is possible, we must also seek what is right, and we must not forget that even the most noble ends do not justify any means.

The greatest question of our time is not communism versus individualism, not Europe versus America, not even the East versus the West; it is whether men can live without God. WILL DURANT

We live in a society in which all transcendent values have been removed and thus there is no moral standard by which anyone can say right is right and wrong is wrong. What we live in is, in the memorable image of Richard Neuhaus, a naked public square.

Only a life lived in service to the truth can be a good life.

When morality is reduced to personal preferences and when no one can be held morally accountable, society quickly falls into disorder.

Who is to decide what are the 'right' values?" wrote a professor of education. "Does ultimate moral authority lie with institutions such as church and state to codify and impose? Or, in a free society, are these matters of private conscience, with final choice belonging to the individual?"2

A healthy democracy requires a decent society it requires that we are honorable, generous, tolerant and respectful.

The things that are wrong with the country today are the sum total of all the things that are wrong with us as individuals.