Quotes About Ethics

Collecting more taxes than is absolutely necessary is legalized robbery.

A fine is a tax for doing something wrong. A tax is a fine for doing something right.

The greatest task before civilisation at present is to make machines what they ought to be, the slaves, instead of the masters of men; and if civilisation fails at the task, then without doubt it and its makers will go down to a common destruction.

My dear boy... anybody can be good in the country.

One cannot think crooked and walk straight.

If a man walks in the woods for love of them and see his fellows with impartial eye afar, for half his days, he is esteemed a loafer; but if he spends his whole day as a speculator, shearing off those woods, he is esteemed industrious and enterprising — making earth bald before its time.

What can you expect from people who eat corpses and drink spirits?

I really must give up animal food. We manage to swallow flesh only because we do not think of the cruel and sinful thing we do... If only we do not allow our heart to grow callous, its protest against cruelty is always clearly heard; and yet we go on perpetrating cruelties easily, merrily, all of us — in fact, any one who does not join in is dubbed a crank.

The lamb thy riot dooms to bleed... licks the hand just rais'd to shed his blood.

To my mind the life of a lamb is no less precious than that of a human being. I should be unwilling to take the life of a lamb for the sake of the human body.

I eat everything that nature voluntarily gives: fruits, vegetables, and the products of plants. But I ask you to spare me what animals are forced to surrender: meat, milk, and cheese.

Why are sex and violence always linked? I'm afraid they'll blur together in people's minds — sexandviolence — until we can't tell them apart. I expect to hear a newscaster say, "The mob became unruly and the police were forced to resort to sex."

Be father to virtue, but father-in-law to vice.

Virtue, as understood by the world, is a constant struggle against the laws of nature.

We are double-edged blades, and every time we whet our virtue the return stroke straps our vice.

Blushing is the color of virtue.

All bow to virtue — and then walk away.

Beware of making your moral staple consist of the negative virtues.

Many consent to be virtuous, only on condition that everybody will give them credit for it.

We are more inclined to regret our virtues than our vices; but only the very honest will admit this.

He who hates vice hates mankind.

Virtue's the Paint that can make Wrinkles shine.

To many people virtue consists chiefly in repenting faults, not in avoiding them.

The excess of virtue is a vice.