Quotes About Ethics

Every young man would do well to remember that all successful business stands on the foundation of morality.

A man that does not know how to be angry does not know how to be good.

Clothes and manners do not make the man; but when he is made, they greatly improve his appearance

The man who kan ware a paper collar a hole week and keap, it klean, aint fit for enny thing else.

Conscience is the tongue of Heaven.

Forgotten also is Jefferson's blunt rationalization for enslaving African-Americans. Augustus John Foster, who visited Jefferson at Monticello in 1807, reported that "he considered them to be as far inferior to the rest of mankind as the mule is to the horse, and as made to carry burthens.

Where there is law there is injustice

The simplest and shortest ethical precept is to be served as little as possible . . . and to serve others as much as possible.

And therefore the Christian, who is subject only to the inner divine law, not only cannot carry out the enactments of the external law, when they are not in agreement with the divine law of love which he acknowledges (as is usually the case with state obligations), he cannot even recognize the duty of obedience to anyone or anything whatever, he cannot recognize the duty of what is called allegiance.

The antagonism between life and conscience may be removed in two ways: by a change of life or by a change of conscience.

there is a kind of business, called Government service, which allows men to treat other men as things without having human brotherly relations with them; and that they should be so linked together by this Government service that the responsibility for the results of their deeds should not fall on any one of them individually.

At school he had done things which had formerly seemed to him very horrid and made him feel disgusted with himself when he did them; but when later on he saw that such actions were done by people of good position and that they did not regard them as wrong, he was able not exactly to regard them as right, but to forget about them entirely or not be at all troubled at remembering them.

Reason is often the slave of sin; it strives to justify it.

Here it is. Let's say you're married, you love your wife, but you're attracted by another woman.' 'Excuse me, but I absolutely cannot understand how after eating my fill here I could go past a bakery and steal a roll.

Men never understand what honor is, though they're always talking about it

To sin is a human business, but to justify sins is a devilish business.

When it is impossible to stretch the very elastic threads of historical ratiocination any farther, when actions are clearly contrary to all that humanity calls right or even just, the historians produce a saving conception of 'greatness.' 'Greatness,' it seems, excludes the standards of right and wrong. For the 'great' man nothing is wrong, there is no atrocity for which a 'great' man can be blamed.

One must do one of two tings: either admit that the existing order of society is just, and then stick up for one's rights in it;or acknowledge that you are enjoying unjust privileges, as i do, and then enjoy them and be satisfied.

vegetarianism is the taproot of humanitarianism.

I realized that even if all the people in the world from the day of creation found this to be necessary according to whatever theory, I knew that it was not necessary and that it was wrong. Therefore, my judgements must be based on what is right and necessary and not on what people say and do; I must judge not according to progress but according to my own heart.

Odurna je životinjska priroda zvjeri u ?ovjeku, ali kad je ona u ?istom obliku, onda je ti s visine svog duševnog života vidiš i prezireš, pa ili pao, ili se održao - ti ostaješ ono što si bio; ali kad se ta ista životinja krije pod tobože estetskim, poetskim ovojem i iziskuje da joj se pokloniš, onda sam nestaješ u njoj i, obožavaju?i životinju, ne razlikuješ više dobro od zla. Onda je to užasno.

What is reason given me for, if I am not to use it to avoid bringing unhappy beings into the world!

The only real science is the knowledge of how a person should live his life. And this knowledge is open to everyone.

Like the majority of irreproachably virtuous women, wearying often of the monotony of a virtuous life, Dolly from a distance excused illicit love, and even envied it a little.