Quotes About Ethics

We're paying the highest tribute you can pay a man. We trust him to do right. It's that simple.

What makes saintliness in my view, as distinguished from ordinary goodness, is a certain quality of magnanimity and greatness of soul that brings life within the circle of the heroic.

And, perhaps, among us may be found generous spirits, who do not estimate honour and justice by dollars and cents.

It is generally understood that men don't aspire after the absolute right, but only to do about as well as the rest of the world.

Perhaps," said Miss Ophelia, "it is impossible for a person who does no good not to do harm.

There's a way you political folks have of coming round and round a plain right thing

The power of fictitious writing, for good as well as for evil, is a thing which ought most seriously to be reflected upon.

But who, sir, makes the trader? Who is most to blame? The enlightened, cultivated, intelligent man, who supports the system of which the trader is the inevitable result, or the poor trader himself? You make the public statement that calls for his trade, that debauches and depraves him, till he feels no shame in it; and in what are you better than he?

Now," said the young man, stooping gravely over his book of bills, "if you can assure me that I really can buy this kind of pious, and that it will be set down to my account in the book up above, as something belonging to me, I wouldn't care if I did go a little extra for it. How d'ye say?" "Wal, raily, I can't do that," said the trader. "I'm a thinkin that every man'll have to hang on his own hook, in them ar quarters.

There's a way you political folks have of coming round and round a plain right thing; and you don't believe in it yourselves when it comes to practice.

Now, John, I don't know anything about politics, but I can read my Bible; and there I see that I must feed the hungry, clothe the naked, and comfort the desolate; and that Bible I mean to follow." "But in cases where your doing so would involve a great public evil--" "Obeying God never brings on public evils. I know it can't. It's always safest, all round, to do as He bids us.

Greasy or not greasy, they will govern you, when their time comes," said Augustine; "and they will be just such rulers as you make them.

A very humane jurist once said, The worst use you can put a man to is to hang him. No; there is another use that a man can be put to that is WORSE!

O, ye who take freedom from man, with what words shall ye answer it to God?

Well," said Miss Ophelia, "do you think slavery right or wrong?" "I'm not going to have any of your horrid New England directness, cousin," said St. Clare, gayly.

A very humane jurist once said, 'The worst use you can put a man to is to hang him.' No; there is another use that a man can be put to that is worse!

Perhaps it is impossible for a person who does no good not to do harm.

Fidelity to conscience is inconsistent with retiring modesty. If it be so, let the modesty succumb. It can be only a false modesty which can be thus endangered.

Laws and customs may be creative of vice; and should be therefore perpetually under process of observation and correction: but laws and customs cannot be creative of virtue: they may encourage and help to preserve it; but they cannot originate it.

Religion is a temper, not a pursuit.

You can stand tall, without standing on someone. You can be a victor without having victims.

The right of privacy… is broad enough to encompass a woman's decision whether or not to terminate her pregnancy.

How does anyone think that 'attempted murder' counts the same as actual murder? They shouldn't even call it 'attempted': that's just a way to flatter failure.

Abortion raises moral and spiritual questions over which honorable persons can disagree sincerely and profoundly. But those disagreements did not then and do not now relieve us of our duty to apply the Constitution faithfully.