Quotes About Ethics

Good can imagine Evil; but Evil cannot imagine Good.

A poet can write about a man slaying a dragon, but not about a man pushing a button that releases a bomb.

To save your world, you asked this man to die: Would this man, could he see you now, asked why?

God may reduce you on Judgment Day to tears of shame, reciting by heart the poems you would have written, had your life been good. –

I have been played at being a HERO. But I could not bear how FOOLISH I felt every time I spared someone who was determined to kill me." -Elektra (Elektra #1, page 4)

Though a good motive cannot sanction a bad action, a bad motive will always vitiate a good action. In common and trivial matters we may act without motives, but in momentous ones the most careful deliberation is wisdom.

There is more than a morsel of truth in the saying, "He who hates vice hates mankind."

Sanitizing the past is every bit as morally irresponsible as whitewashing atrocities in the present.

Temptation rarely comes in working hours. It is in their leisure time that men are made or marred.

The most useful thing about a principle is that it can always be sacrificed to expediency.

The end of culture is right living.

You know, of course, that the Tasmanians, who never committed adultery, are now extinct.

Hypocrisy is the most difficult and nerve-racking vice that any man can pursue; it needs an unceasing vigilance and a rare detachment of spirit. It cannot, like adultery or gluttony, be practiced at spare moments; it is a whole-time job.

You know that the Tasmanians, who never committed adultery, are now extinct.

A learned theologian has laid down That starving men may take what's necessary, And yet be sinless.

I've never hit a woman in my life. Not even my own mother.

by our lofty standards animals are poor liars.

The slogan of Hell: Eat or be eaten. The slogan of Heaven: Eat and be eaten.

Moreover, if great men are the only hope of the Evolutionary Process, they are morally bound to rule over the masses for their own good -- we are all here on earth to help others: what on earth the others are here for, I don't know -- and the masses have no right whatsoever to resist them.

A dead man who never caused others to die seldom rates a statue.

Education, all smoothly say, is the production of useful citizens. But, good God, what on earth is a useful citizen just now?

Everyone behaves badly--given the chance.

Public opinion is a second conscience.

The only morality in a cruel world is chance.