Quotes About Ethics

The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule.

Time is the great legalizer, even in the field of morals.

Hope is beyond price and the pharmaceutical companies, which are run by businessmen not altruists, price their products accordingly.

When push comes to shove we can afford to lose an arm or a leg, but I am operating on peoples thoughts and feelings... and if something goes wrong I can destroy that persons character... forever.

There is no evidence that the complete head shaves we did in the past, which made the patients look like convicts, had any effect on infection rates, which had been the ostensible reason for doing them. I suspect the real – albeit unconscious – reason was that dehumanizing the patients made it easier for the surgeons to operate.

Just as it is irresistible to save a life, it is also very difficult to tell somebody that I cannot save them

Es el cirujano quien carga con toda la responsabilidad, pese a toda la cháchara sobre la cultura libre de culpa.

First, do no harm . . .' Commonly attributed to Hippokrates of Kos, c. 460 BC 'Every surgeon carries within himself a small cemetery, where from time to time he goes to pray – a place of bitterness and regret, where he must look for an explanation for his failures.' René Leriche, La philosophie de la chirurgie, 1951

Patients become objects of fear as well as of sympathy. It is much easier to feel compassion for other people if you are not responsible for what happens to them

The study of crime begins with the knowledge of oneself.

To live without killing is a thought which could electrify the world, if men were only capable of staying awake long enough to let the idea soak in.

Since man is a moral being, his culture cannot be a-moral. Because man is a religious being, his culture, too, must be religiously oriented.

The good of any one individual is of no more importance, from the point of view (if I may so say) of the Universe, than the good of any other; unless, that is, there are special grounds for believing that more good is likely to be realized in the one case than in the other.

Reason shows me that if my happiness is desirable and good, the equal happiness of any other person must be equally desirable. ...

A sin is two sins when it is defended.

His brow is wet with honest sweat, He earns whate'er he can, And looks the whole world in the face, For he owes not any man.

Morality without religion is only a kind of dead reckoning - an endeavor to find our place on a cloudy sea by measuring the distance we have run, but without any observation of the heavenly bodies.

Hold yourself responsible for a higher standard than anybody else expects of you, never excuse yourself.

Selfishness at the expense of others' happiness is demonism.

Expedients are for the hour, but principles are for the ages.

He who is false to present duty breaks a thread in the loom, and will find the flaw when he may have forgotten its cause.

Gambling with cards or dice or stocks is all one thing. It's getting money without giving an equivalent for it.

Hold yourself responsible for a higher standard than anyone else expects of you. Never excuse yourself.

Hold yourself responsible for a higher standard than anybody expects of you. Never excuse yourself.