Quotes About Ethics

no one bears witness for the witness

it seems that he didn't want a world turned to mud. He believed in a soul.

La tentación del hombre moderno es la pretensión de no necesitar de Dios para poder hacer el bien

Notice how atheists who believe in real right and wrong make a massive intellectual leap of faith. They believe that somehow moral facts were eternally part of the "furniture" of reality but that from impersonal and valueless slime, human persons possessing rights, dignity, worth, and duties were eventually produced.

Tackling Old Testament ethics is a challenge. Besides a lot of territory to cover, the ancient Near East seems so strange and even otherworldly! We need a good bit of background discussion to help make better sense of this world and of certain Old Testament texts.

You are free to say no to an unfair, disrespectful, or dishonest request for your time, talent, or treasure, without an apology or long explanation on your part.

Goodness deliberately chooses to do the right thing and firmly resists what is wrong. Merely avoiding bad things doesn't make women good.

Physical courage is the type involved in overcoming the fear of physical injury or death in order to save others or oneself. Moral courage entails maintaining ethical integrity or authenticity at the risk of losing friends, employment, privacy, or prestige. Psychological courage includes that sort required to confront a debilitating illness or destructive habit or situation; it is the bravery inherent in facing one's inner demons.

cynicism enables you to do nothing but feel morally superior to those who are doing something good but imperfect in an imperfect

Courage without conscience," wrote Robert Green Ingersoll, "is a wild beast.

The point is, however: God save us all from the moral zealot who places himself above the law and is willing to burn my house down, and yours, providing he feels he is sufficiently right and I sufficiently wrong.

Nowadays it is no longer a question of who is right, but who is at least not criminal

To put it simply, you are never right to make wrong, or wrong to make right. To be right, make right.

Before you develop a conscience, torture is amusing.

In England, at least, corruption only became unfashionable (and in fact only started to be called "corruption") when there started to be other, faster ways to get rich.

The government spying on people doesn't literally make programmers write worse code. It just leads eventually to a world in which bad ideas will win. And because this is so important to hackers, they're especially sensitive to it. They can sense totalitarianism approaching from a distance, as animals can sense an approaching thunderstorm.

Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. — C.S.LEWIS

if you're trying to choose between two theories and one gives you an excuse for being lazy, the other one is probably right.

Once you're allowed to do that, people who want to get rich can do it by generating wealth instead of stealing it.

All religions are good 'in principle' - but unfortunately this abstract Good has only rarely prevented their practitioners from behaving like bastards.

Love of Truth is one of the strongest motives for replacing what really happens by a streamlined account or, to express it in a less polite manner -- love of truth is one of the strongest motives for deceiving oneself and others.

we're now ruled by people who are willing to endanger civilization for the sake of political expediency, not to mention increased profits for their fossil-fuel friends. About

Are you sure what you're doing is wrong?

A good lawyer is part con man, part priest -- promising riches, threatening hell. My ethical rules are simple. I won't lie to the court or let a client do it. But I've never been in this position. How far would I go for a woman who mattered? Is there anything I wouldn't do to win?