Quotes About Ethics

If you go to your death rather than do everything you might to prevent what is happening, you are merely committing suicide and trying to make yourself feel better about it. That is the act of a coward. It is beneath contempt.

So? Bob said. Hat up, go kill her. Problem solved. Bob, I said. You can't just go around killing people. I know. That's why you should do it. No, no. I can't go around killing people, either.

There is no truer gauge of a man's character than the way in which he employs his strength, his power.

For me chivalry isn't dead; it's an involuntary reflex.

Because even if they are doing something immoral, I'd be an idiot to start criticizing them for it if I wasn't perfect myself. Smoking is self-destructive. Drinking is self-destructive. Losing your temper and yelling at people is wrong. Lying is wrong. Cheating is wrong. Stealing is wrong. But people do that stuff all the time. Soon as I figure out how to be a perfect human being, then I'm qualified to go lecture other people about how they live their lives.

He wasn't evil as much as magnificently innocent of any kind of morality.

It's one of the things that makes us different than they are, Harry. The blood on their hands does not make it right to bloody my own. My choices are measured against my own soul. Not against the stains on theirs.

The real battle for your own soul isn't about falling from a great height; it's about descending, or not, one choice at a time.

I like to think of it less as embezzling and more as an involuntary goodwill contribution.

Whenever you've got a choice, do good, kiddo. It isn't always fun or easy, but in the long run it makes your life better.

But you can't go around changing your definition of right and wrong (or smart and stupid) just because doing the wrong thing happens to be really convenient. Sometimes it isn't easy to be sane, smart, and responsible. Sometimes it sucks. Sucks wang. Camel wang. But that doesn't turn wrong into right or stupid into smart.

People always equate beauty with good, but it just ain't so.

Animals do not do what they have done. Animals kill to eat, to defend themselves or their own, and to protect their territory. Not for the joy of it. Not for the lust of it...Only humans do that, wizard.

Harry, life isn't simple. There is such a thing as black and white. Right and wrong. But when you're in the thick of things, sometimes it's hard for us to tell. You didn't do what you did for your own benefit. You did it so that you could protect others. That doesn't make it right - but it doesn't make you a monster, either. You still have free will. You still get to choose what you will do and what you will be and what you will become.

It doesn't make you a monster to want, she said, her voice very gentle. It's what you do with it that matters.

I hate what you represent. ... Power without conviction. Isana replied, her tone lifeless, matter of fact. Ambition without conscience. Decent folk suffer at the hands of those like you.

Sometimes I hate having a conscience, and a stupidly thorough sense of honor.

It isn't about being fair and equal. It's about the difference between right and wrong. He stared out at the bloody Elinarch. And this was wrong.

The blood on their hands does not make it right to bloody my own. My choices are measured against my own soul. Not against the stains on theirs.

No, Bob. Just no. For crying out loud. She's seventeen. Better move quick, then, Bob said. Before anything starts to droop. Taste of perfection while you can, that's what I always say. ..... The perverted little creep has a point, my host.

Ambitions are incompatible with consciences, you know. The two strangle one another straightaway and leave an awful mess behind them.

Intentions count for far less than the consequences of the actions born from them.

I don't know the good or the evil of the thing. That's something that only you mortals worry about.

Whenever you've got a choice, do good, kiddo. It isn't always fun or easy, but in the long run it makes your life better.