Quotes About Ethics

Even while an atheist, he held some things sacred.

As is the case with many adolescents, Lewis's increased command over over the things of the world brought with it a corresponding atrophy of the moral sense.

I could not do it. I would not do it. I sat back on my heels with the book in my hand with the light of the fire flickering and dying down and realized that not even in mortal danger could I bring myself to burn a book.

Getting a woman into power is not the point—it's getting a good woman into power who thinks and cares about what she does.

Ill wishing is a curse on the woman who does it, as well as the one who receives it. When you put such words out in the world, they can overshoot-like an arrow. A curse can go beyond your target and harm another. A wise woman curses very sparingly. I would hope that you never curse at all. Bless you my daughter, and may you remain pure in heart and get your desires.

A single man's imperfect conscience can never be superior to centuries of tradition.

It takes a certain amount of courage, he though, to face yourself and say with candor, I'm rotten. I've done evil and I will again. It was no accident; it emanated from the true, authentic me.

Everything is becoming so shappy these days. So lacking in worth. I just don't feel like joing the trend. - Fenton Wood-Lacy

Shouldn't a man's character be judged by the way he lives, not by how much destruction he causes? That's

lie don't seem a lie anymore when it's meant to save a dog, and right and wrong's all mixed up in my head.

They say that the spiritual path is straight and narrow, but I used to wonder about that. I used to think that the spiritual path was about being good. It was hard to be good because there were only a few ways of being good. I have since learned the opposite. The spiritual path is straight and narrow because all it takes is moving into a lie to make you absolutely step off of it.

What is right, in the end, is not always what it seems to be, and some rules are better broken.

C'est la pratique de la torture qui permet de distinguer à coup sûr l'homme de l'animal.

Un gentleman, c'est quelqu'un qui sait jouer de la cornemuse et qui n'en joue pas.

Vivre d'un troupeau, c'est en grande partie le parasiter quelle que soit la préocupation qu'on ait de son bien-être. Nous sommes à la fois le législatif et l'exécutif. On ne peut enfermer des animaux dans une étreinte intéressée sans aller à l'encontre de leur nature. La démarche soucieuse de vivre avec et non de peut déjà atténuer l'arbitraire. Il s'agit alors de vivre des réciprocités. (p.238)

I don't care how the sin ledger stands. There seem to be a number of artificial standards of good and evil that don't really relate to true merit or demerit. Maybe the official system of classification has failed to keep up with the changing nature of our society.

If a thing could not be accomplished honestly, probably it wasn't worth accomplishing at all.

Yo declaro que la justicia no es otra cosa que la conveniencia del más fuerte.

The difficulty, my friends, is not in avoiding death, but in avoiding unrighteousness; for that runs faster than death.

In practice people who study philosophy too long become very odd birds, not to say thoroughly vicious; while even those who are the best of them are reduced by...[philosophy] to complete uselessness as members of society.

The man who finds that in the course of his life he has done a lot of wrong often wakes up at night in terror, like a child with a nightmare, and his life is full of foreboding: but the man who is conscious of no wrongdoing is filled with cheerfulness and with the comfort of old age.

Money-makers are tiresome company, as they have no standard but cash value.

Philosophy is the highest music.

Is there a perfect world?