Quotes About Ethics

The individualism of current economic theory is manifest in the purely self-interested behavior it generally assumes. It has no real place for fairness, malevolence, and benevolence, nor for the preservation of human life or any other moral concern.

Any attempt to replace a personal conscience by a collective conscience does violence to the individual and is the first step toward totalitarianism.

Corruption will be enemy number one.

A virtuous expediency, then, seems the highest desirable or attainable earthly excellence for the mass of men, and is the only earthly excellence that their Creator intended for them.

There are times when even the most potent governor must wink at transgression, in order to preserve the laws inviolate for the future.

The maker of kitsch does not create inferior art, he is not an incompetent or a bungler, he cannot be evaluated by aesthetic standards; rather, he is ethically depraved, a criminal willing radical evil. And since it is radical evil that is manifest here, evil per se , forming the absolute negative pole of every value-system, kitsch will always be evil, not just kitsch in art, but kitsch in every value-system that is not an imitation system.

A man who sacrifices himself must be a decent chap.

Love of God is not always the same as love of good.

True idealists, in contrast, care about the welfare of others above and especially against their own interests. If you enjoy your work or profit from it, how can you be sure you're truly doing it for others and not yourself?

For great wrongdoing there are great punishments from the gods.

I never yet feared those men who set a place apart in the middle of their cities where they gather to cheat one another and swear oaths which they break.

Now if a man thus favoured died as he has lived, he will be just the one you are looking for: the only sort of person who deserves to be called happy. But mark this: until he is dead, keep the word "happy" in reserve. Till then, he is not happy, but only lucky...

Often an entire city has suffered because of an evil man.

There was not after all a single kind of strife, but on the earth there are two kinds: one of them a man might praise when he recognized her, but the other is blameworthy.

Giving is good, but taking is bad and brings death.

Do not seek evil gains evil gains are the equivalent of disaster.

He for himself weaves woe who weaves for others woe, and evil counsel on the counselor recoils.

He's only harming himself who's bent upon harming another

Plan harm for another and harm yourself most, The evil we hatch always comes home to roost.

Badness can be got easily and in shoals; the road to her is smooth, and she lives very near us. But between us and Goodness the gods have placed the sweat of our brows;

It is best to work, at whatever you have a talent for doing, without turning your greedy thought toward what some other man possesses, but take care of your own livelihood, as I advise you.

You need to do the work to bring the money in, but not compromise standards.

The urge to gamble is so universal and its practice so pleasurable that I assume it must be evil.

Hell is paved with great granite blocks hewn from the hearts of those who said, I can do no other.