Quotes About Ethics

wasn't going to try and get the foreman's job, even though it gave you a chance of staying alive, for the worst thing in the camps was forcing another person, a prisoner like yourself, to bow to your will (or anyone else's). What did it matter that I knew that Ivanov was a swine, that Petrov was a spy and Zaslavsky a false witness?

Essere un rivoluzionario significa prima di tutto essere una persona onestà. Di per sé una cosa semplice, eppure così difficile.

Dignity is not negotiable. Dignity is the honor of the family.

And the greatest tragedy of our age is we don't listen to our consciences. We don't say what we think. We feel one thing and do another.

In the cruel and terrible time in which our generation has been condemned to live on this earth, we must never make peace with evil. We must never become indifferent to others or undemanding of ourselves.

I know that a life has high value, but our rights, our independence,our honour have a higher value than life.

Blood is inherited and virtue is acquired.

It is quite impossible to understand,' I commented afterwards, 'how we can be such strong individualists, so insistent on the rights and claims of every human soul, and yet at the same time countenance (and if we are English, even take quite calmly) this wholesale murder, which if it were applied to animals or birds or indeed anything except men would fill us with a sickness and repulsion greater than we could endure.

It is impossible," I concluded, "to find any satisfaction in the thought of 25,000 slaughtered Germans, left to mutilation and decay; the destruction of men as though beasts, whether they be English, French, German or anything else, seems a crime to the whole march of civilization.

Dangling a carrot in front of a donkey—or anyone else for that matter—is not nice, and not fair, unless you eventually plan to give it up to them.

the elimination of restitution and retribution converts the offender into an object to be manipulated rather than a person responsible for wrongdoing.

There is an obvious disconnect between someone's claim to be relativist and his own moral judgments, including his judgment that people ought to be relativist.

It needs to hurt to break a promise; otherwise, it's too easy to let the moment pass.

They do a lot of animal testing in the cosmetics industry. Maybe they should brag about it in their commercials: "Aquanet hair spray, if it can blind a Spider Monkey, it can make your hair look luscious." Or "Gillette, because four thousand bald squirrels can't be wrong."

Drug companies don't have hearts or consciences. They want to sell you drugs. The company doesn't give a fig whether the drug makes you ill or kills you. The company just wants your money.

They want us eating the food they are making in laboratories

HL Mencken who wrote that the relationship of a journalist to a politician should be that of a dog to a lamppost.

Other medical issues which are never debated openly include chemotherapy, radiotherapy, vivisection, drug therapy for the menopause and heart surgery.)

One of the problems with setting up any such research programme would undoubtedly be the problem of obtaining informed consent (an essential requirement before any new product can be tested).

The terrible immoralities are the cunning ones hiding behind masks of morality, such as exploiting people while pretending to help them.

Knowledge is power. Power to do evil...or power to do good. Power itself is not evil. So knowledge itself is not evil.

Human reason can excuse any evil; that is why it's so important that we don't rely on it.

Human reason can excuse any evil.

Until we have the courage to recognize cruelty for what it is-whether its victim is human or animal-we cannot expect things to be much better in this world. We cannot have peace among men whose hearts delight in killing any living creature. By every act that glorifies or even tolerates such moronic delight in killing we set back the progress of humanity. -Rachel Carson (1907-1964)