Quotes About Ethics

Not believing in a hereafter, I really can't see any practical difference if people remember me as a film director or a pedophile or at all. All that I ask is my ashes be scattered close to a pharmacy.

They asked me my goal in life. I said, to forge in the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience of my race and see if it could be mass-produced in plastic.

The truth is you never know when you have to rely on Aristotle or Confucius when faced with choosing to hit a lamppost or running over a man coming from Zabar's with fresh bagels.

if you know yourself to be honorable, strong, brave, fair-minded, generous, clear-headed, or articulate, or to have any number of other good characteristics, that is the image you will project, and that image forms the basis for the decisions you make.

La última vez que hice esto tenía un sacerdote enfrente. Y tenía una maleta llenísima de dólares, lista para salvarme del Infierno.

If you wish to be thought a good estate manager, or a good horseman, or a good physician, or a good flute player without really being one, just imagine all the tricks you have to invent just to keep up appearances. You might succeed at first, but in the end you're going to be exposed as an impostor.

For I believe that the best life is lived by those who take the best care to make themselves as good as possible, and the pleasantest life by those who are most conscious that they are becoming better.

whatever you determine to be right, with diligence endeavour to perform.

the shortest and surest way to live with honour in the world is to be in reality what we would appear to be: and if you observe, you will find that all human virtues increase and strengthen themselves by the practice and experience of them. 

Shamelessness, they hold, treads close on the heels of ingratitude, and thus ingratitude is the ringleader and chief instigator to every kind of baseness.

it is no disgrace but honourable rather to steal, except such things as the law forbids;

We must also be careful to educate our sons and daughters when children are born to the women whom we've taken as wives. Striving to set the best example we can for our children will make us act even more nobly.

We're bound to be proud of the way our children turn out if they see nothing unseemly and hear nothing shameful. They, like us, will live in the light of all that's good, and their virtue—like ours—will be their strength.

do you not take him to be just who commits no manner of injustice? It

Most of all I vowed that my followers would learn more from my own example than from any legal code or set of regulations. As important to the people as written laws may be, the leader serves as a living law. He not only acts as a competent guide but also functions as a wise judge, detecting and punishing those who fail to serve the people with justice and honesty.

I've trained you to be as honest as any man who ever lived, but if virtue serves to guide our actions with our friends and allies, every sort of trick can be used against our enemies. That's why you were taught never to hunt a lion or a bear without some special advantage. Didn't that kind of lesson teach you cunning and deceit?

that the truly contented man is not the possessor of vast riches. The crown of happiness goes to the person who has the skill to gain money fairly, use it honorably, and not mistake gold for a god of power and light.

Do you think there is anything worse for a man than that which makes him choose what is bad for him instead what is good, and persuades him to cultivate the former and disregard the latter, and compels him to behave in the opposite way to that which is adopted by disciplined people?

We discussed how wonderful it would be if a man could train himself to be both ethical and brave, and to earn all he needed for his household and himself. That kind of man, we agreed, would be appreciated by the whole world. But if a man went further still, if he had the wisdom and the skill to be the guide and governor of other men, supplying all their needs and making them all they ought to be, that would be the greatest thing of all.

Obedience Should Not Be the Result of Compulsion  

You're a good friend, Apollodorus, but would you rather see me put to death justly or unjustly?

We call a Man ungrateful, answered who having received a kindness, does not return the like, if occasion off ere.

Religion? Mr Kumar grinned broadly. I don't believe in religion. Religion is darkness.

I wept heartily over this poor little deceased soul. It was the first sentient being I had ever killed. I was now a killer. I was now as guilty as Cain. I was sixteen years old, a harmless boy, bookish and religious, and now I had blood on my hands. It's a terrible burden to carry. All sentient life is sacred.