Quotes About Ethics

We no longer ask of a judicial ruling or a legislative act: is it good? Is it fair? Is it just? Is it right? Will it help bring about a better society or a better world? Those used to be the political questions, even if they invited no easy answers. We must learn once again to pose them.

Markets do not automatically generate trust, cooperation or collective action for the common good. Quite the contrary: it is in the nature of economic competition that a participant who breaks the rules will triumph—at least in the short run—over more ethically sensitive competitors.

in a constitutionally ordered state, where laws are derived from broad principles of right and wrong and where those principles are enshrined and protected by agreed upon procedures and practices, it can never be in the long-term interest of the state or its citizens to flout those procedures at home or associate too closely overseas with the enemies of your founding ideals.

We must distinguish better than some of our predecessors between desirable ends and unacceptable means.

Lawyers are… the High Priests of America.

Justice precedes beauty. Without justice, beauty is impossible, an obscenity. And when beauty has gone, what does a cameraman do with his eye?

You have to have hope. It's irresponsible to give false hope, which I think a lot of playwrights are guilty of. But I also think it's irresponsible to simply be a nihilist, which quite a lot of playwrights, especially playwrights younger than me, have become guilty of.

You have a good heart and you think the good thing is to be guilty and kind but it's not always kind to be gentle and soft, there's a genuine violence softness and kindness visit on people. Sometimes self-interested is the most generous thing you can be.

Mama shook her head. "No, they don't kill for food. They kill for sport and for the thrill of the chase.

The first duty of society is justice. ALEXANDER HAMILTON (1757–1804)

You know . . . I'm thinking that maybe we should be the ones to benefit from this motherfucker's stupidity." Trina looked up at Pat. "What, you mean . . . ?" "Let's rob this faggot. Why not?

Sooner or later, we sell out for money.

Truthful hyperbole' is a contradiction in terms. It's a way of saying, 'It's a lie, but who cares?' 

Jane Austen's profound concern with good manners was thus not simply a reflection of a cloistered gentility: it was a form of politics -- an involvement with a widespread attempt to save the nation by correcting, monitoring, and elevating its morals.

How might an unscrupulous person try to get around those famous laws, designed to protect humans, as well robots, from each other?

As some scientists believe, then a new intelligent life form will have been created. It will be able to work 24 hours a day, 7 days a week for no pay, easily doing the work that 2 to 3 humans did before. Think about what that situation will mean to an employer.

If what you're sowing isn't evil, you should have nothing to fear.

One person's karma becomes two people's karma through sexual relations, which can be good or bad. That is why you must have sexual relations with only one partner so that you do not load yourself with the karma and pollution of many others.

Eine Hure ist eine Dame, die es für Geld macht, was mir viel mehr einleuchtet, als es umsonst zu machen.

What is right and what is wrong is a very sensitive matter.

How nice it feels to be good," she thought quietly.

Å, Anna Aemelin, det eneste du bryr deg om, er din egen samvittighet, det er den du pleier.

In the middle of the gravel was a large sign with black latters that said PRIVATE PROPERTY--NO TRESPASSING. "We'll go ashore," Grandma said. She was very angry. Sophia looked frightened. "There's a big difference," her grandmother explained. "No well-bred person goes ashore on someone else's island when there's no one home. But if they put up a sign, then you do it anyway, because it's a slap in the face.

Let me get this straight. You didn't feel it would be acceptable to enter my home without permission, but taking my clothes was just fine and dandy?" -Marin