Quotes About Ethics

Why is it that human beings are allowed to grow up without the necessary apparatus to make sound ethical decisions?

I didn't know quite what fornicating was, but I had read about it in Deuteronomy, and I knew it was a sin. But why was it so noisy? Most sins you did quietly so as not to get caught.

De ce sunt oare oamenii lasati s? creasc? f?r? a avea aparatura necesar? pentru a lua deciziile morale cele mai s?n?toase?

I won't eat what I can't kill. It seems shoddy, hypocritical.

I began to feel like Sarpi, that Venetian priest and diplomat, who said he never told a lie but didn't tell the truth to everyone.

Even being good has unintended consequences. You're only human, after all.

All our faults, vanities, idiocies, prejudices, cruelty. Do you really want augmented humans, superhumans, uploaded humans, forever humans, with all the shit that comes with us? Morally and spiritually, we are barely crawling out of the sea onto dry land. We're not ready for the future you want. Have we ever been ready? said Victor. Progress is a series of accidents, of mistakes made in a hurry, of unforeseen consequences.

I may not spare you, I said. For I would rather spare all those who would come into contact with you, were you to be left alive.

Could so many straightforward ordinary lives suddenly become men to kill and women to rape?

Truth is an homage that the good man pays to his own dignity.

To renounce freedom is to renounce one's humanity, one's rights as a man and equally one's duties.

Virtue is a state of war, and to live in it we have always to combat with ourselves.

Our will is always for our own good, but we do not always see what that is; the people is never corrupted, but it is often deceived... (Bk2:3)

If force compels obedience, there is no need to invoke a duty to obey, and if force ceases to compel obedience, there is no longer any obligation.

T]he man who meditates is a depraved animal.

If he who has control of men ought not to control the laws, then he who controls the laws ought not control men: otherwise his laws would minister to his passions..

How could I become wicked, when I had nothing but examples of gentleness before my eyes, and none around me but the best people in the world?

The strongest is never strong enough to be always the master, unless he transforms strength into right, and obedience into duty.

To decide that the son of a slave is born a slave is to decide that he is not born a man.

The good man can be proud of his virtue because it is his. But of what is the intelligent man proud?

We cannot teach children the danger of lying to men without feeling as men, the greater danger of lying to children.

Le plus fort n'est jamais assez fort pour être toujours le maître, s'il ne transforme sa force en droit et l'obéissance en devoir.

When a man is set in authority over others, everything conspires to rob him of his sense of justice and reason.

Los límites de lo posible en las cosas morales son más estrechos de lo que pensamos; nuestras debilidades, nuestros vicios, nuestros prejuicios son lo que restringen