Quotes About Ethics

Don't you believe that the punishment should fit the crime? Isn't that what justice is? Letely, though, I wonder if we've gotten more into vengenance than justice.

Discussions about technology—its capacity, what it can and cannot do, what it should and should not do—are the reverse side of the coin to debates on the capacity, ability, and moral entitlements of humans. Attempts

The dress of Virtue, in our parts, was cotton print. I had silk.

Is the prison that Mr. Scoundrel lives in at the end of his career a more uncomfortable place than the workhouse that Mr. Honesty lives in at the end of his career?

Well may your heart believe the truths Well may your heart believe the truths I tell; 'Tis virtue makes the bliss, where'er we dwell.

Tüm ahlaki niteliklerin içinde en kolay çürümeye uÄŸrayan? ''vicdanl?l?k'' denilen niteliktir. Ä°nsan?n ruh hâline baÄŸl? olarak vicdan?, kimi zaman ona ceza kesebilecek en sert yarg?ç olur. Kimi zamansa rahatl?kla suç ortaklar? s?fat?yla hareket edebilen bu ikilinin aras?ndan su s?zmaz.

Mi devoto amor por la verdad se halla, gracias a Dios, muy por encima de mi respeto por las personas.

We frolic in our emancipation from theology, but have we developed a natural ethic—a moral code independent of religion—strong enough to keep our instincts of acquisition, pugnacity, and sex from debasing our civilization into a mire of greed, crime, and promiscuity? Have we really outgrown intolerance, or merely transferred it from religious to national, ideological, or racial hostilities?

We have here the fundamental problem of ethics, the crux of the theory of moral conduct. What is justice? -shall we seek righteousness, or shall we seek power? -is it better to be good, or to be strong?

Animals eat one another without qualm; civilized men consume one another by due process of law. Co-operation

Morality, said Jesus, is kindness to the weak; morality, said Nietzsche, is the bravery of the strong; morality, says Plato, is the effective harmony of the whole.

The only thing unqualifiedly good in this world is a good will - the will to follow the moral law, regardless of profit or loss for ourselves. Never mind your happiness; do your duty. Morality is not properly the doctrine of how we may make ourselves happy, but how we may make ourselves worthy of happiness. Let us seek the happiness in others; but for ourselves, perfection - whether it bring us happiness or pain.

Since there was no Heaven in ancient Jewish theology,231 virtue had to be rewarded here or never.

Read the book not all at once, but in small portions at many sittings. And having finished it, consider that you have but begun to understand it. Read then some commentary, like Pollock's Spinoza, or Martineau's Study of Spinoza, or better, both. Finally, read the Ethics again; it will be a new book to you. When you have finished it a second time you will remain forever a lover of philosophy.

It was a great moral improvement when men ceased to kill or eat their fellowmen, and merely made them slaves. A similar development on a larger scale may be seen today, when a nation victorious in war no longer exterminates the enemy, but enslaves it with indemnities.

men and women have gambled in every age. In every age men have been dishonest and governments have been corrupt;

we do not act rightly because we have virtue or excellence, but we rather have these because we have acted rightly; these virtues are formed in man by his doing the actions;[69] we are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit; the good of man is a working of the soul in the way of excellence in a complete life;... for as it is not one swallow or one fine day that makes a spring, so it is not one day or a short time that makes a man blessed and happy.

Frederick agreed that the punishment of La Barre was extreme; for his part he would rather have condemned the youth to read the entire Summa theologica of Thomas Aquinas; this, he thought, would be a fate worse than death.

When Zeno, who did not believe in slavery, was beating his slave for some offense, the slave pleaded, in mitigation, that by his master's philosophy he had been destined from all eternity to commit this fault; to which Zeno replied, with the calm of a sage, that on the same philosophy he, Zeno, had been destined to beat him for it.

apparently there was no reason now why a man should not do as he pleased, so long as he remained within the law. A disintegrating individualism had weakened the Athenian character

a handful of might is better than a bagful of right.

Wherever philosophy arises, the moral health of the nation decays.

It was even a saying among the philosophers themselves that since learned men had appeared, honest men were nowhere to be found.

When mere creeds or ceremonies usurp priority over moral excellence as a test of religion, religion has disappeared