Quotes About Ethics

I do business with many people over the course of centuries, and treachery is a bad long-term investment. It simply isn't good business.

He had traded the lives of people he did not know for those of men he did. That was, he supposed, human nature.

I told you long ago that being a real wizard means sacrifice. It means knowing things no one else does," he said, still growling. "I told you that it meant that you might have to act upon what you knew, and knew to be right, even though the whole world set its hand against you. Or that you might have to do horrible, necessary things. Do you remember that?

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.

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." "Why not? You've done it before. And you've got a new gun and everything.

No one is an unjust villain in his own mind

There are things you can't walk away from. Not if you want to live with yourself afterward.

I was a man seeking power. For good reasons, maybe. But I wasn't going to lie to myself or anyone else about my actions. If I killed him, I would be taking a life, something that was not mine to take. I would be committing deliberate, calculated murder.

He was wrong, that doesn't make him a villian. That makes him an asshole.

It. Wasn't. Right. No, it wasn't. But the world wasn't a fair place, was it? And I had more reason to know that than most people twice my age. The world wasn't nice, and it wasn't fair. People who didn't deserve it suffered and died every single day. So what? So somebody ought to do something about it.

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

A good man, almost by definition, would seriously question any decisions he made that led to such terrible consequences for others. Especially if those others trusted him.

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.

Make things right?" I asked. "Where did you learn that one?" "From Mr. Carpenter," she said. "He says making things right is the first and last thing you should do every day. And that it's what you always try to do.

Finally, I said, very quietly, 'I don't know if I'm one of the good guys anymore.

And may the crows feast on the unjust.

wizards don't use magic to kill people. They use it to discover, to protect, to mend, to help. Not to destroy.

I will not live in a realm where calculations of power supersede justice and law - regardless of how inconvenient that may be to the Crown.

My choices are measured against my own soul. Not against the stains on theirs.

Faith is about what you do. It's about aspiring to be better and nobler and kinder than you are.

There are some basic tenets that ninety-nine percent of all Wiccans follow, but at its core the faith is all about individual freedom. Wiccans believe that as long as you aren't hurting anyone else by doing it, you should be free to act and worship in whatever way you'd like.

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.

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.

It's easy to do the right thing when it doesn't cost you. Not as easy to do the right thing when your back is to the wall." Fitz