Quotes About Ethics

In my experience, honest people don't need to put their hand on a Bible to tell the truth, and with dishonest people, it makes no difference.

A lesson to people who think that, just because they're a little smarter and luckier than ordinary people, they can do as they please.' Lisa

If stealing a few saltshakers was wrong I didn't want to be right.

In brief, death control goes with the grain, birth control against it.

I believe that we are henceforth incapable of returning to an order of moral life which would take the form of a simple submission to commandments or to an alien or supreme will, even if this will were represented as divine. We must accept as a positive good the critique of ethics and religion that has been undertaken by the school of suspicion. From it we have learned to understand that the commandment that gives death, not life, is a product and projection of our own weakness.

I still wonder how policy officials... can sit down at the table with their families and have any appetite for food, or go to sleep at night, knowing that they failed to act. Human beings were sacrificed for political convenience. This would be enough, I think, to turn any reasonable man into a prisoner of his own conscience for the rest of his life.

Nobody disappears completely anymore. The only thing that's disappeared is privacy, which is never coming back. And which is probably a good thing. Why should anything be private? No hiding, no guilt, no shame. Just a completely transparent world.

As long as we do violence to other animals, we'll keep on doing violence to ourselves.

If I've learned one thing, it's that the unfortunate thing about life is that everything's mixed. There's no absolute good and there's no absolute evil. There's just a lot of confusion.

A partir de estas definiciones, Spinoza procede por medio de pruebas euclidianas a construir un sistema determinista e irrefutable que abarca todo el universo.

In countries where all the crooked politicians wear pinstriped suits, the best people are bare-assed.

I had, under pressure, handed over bribes many times before.

So Walmart bribed Mexican officials to redraw the map in its favor, the map was published, and the big-box horror store was built, its obscene size swelling over the pyramids. But this was not the end.

This corruption has become systemic, a way of doing business. Cops make money by shaking down anyone they can.

There are three things I never saw her do: tell a lie, be unkind, or arrive on time.

Lines from William Blake's Jerusalem came to mind: He who would do good to another must do it in Minute Particulars. General Good is the plea of the scoundrel, hypocrite, and flatterer.

The justification for the United States government's barbaric and inhumane violence to the families was a biblical injunction to submit, preached by the attorney general, Jeff Sessions, smiling over his notes: "Persons who violate the law of our nation are subject to prosecution. I would cite you to [sic] the Apostle Paul and his clear and wise command in Romans 13, to obey the laws of the government because God has ordained them for the purpose of order.

His employees must show some respect, even if"—he smiled—"even if they do not feel it in their hearts.

I came to see that for him, for most sociopaths, he had no memory—took no responsibility for anything he'd said or done—had no past, no history, it never happened. Memory is essential to conscience; he had no conscience.

I refuse to give the police a mordida." A bribe.

People in power—police, politicians—believe they can get away with murder.

Telling the truth and being ethical often keeps people from political power, but doing the right thing, always, without exception, is all that matters in the long run, and is ultimately powerful. That's why the true heroes of the civil rights struggle were never politicians. They were humble folk on a mission, enduring sit-ins and organizing marches and debates. When they began to succeed, the politicians, seeing an opportunity, followed them.

desperation is often a rationale for exploitation

It is usually expensive and lonely to be principled;