Quotes About Ethics

The Ten Commandments are preoccupied with goodness. Each commandment is a moral tour de force. Together they present the most compelling plan ever devised for a better life and good world. Yet, they were written—and in the eyes of hundreds of millions, revealed by the Creator—three thousand years ago. The Ten Commandments are what began humanity's long, arduous journey toward moral progress.

The Hebrew original does not say, 'Do not kill.' It says, 'Do not murder.' Both Hebrew and English have two words for taking a life — one is 'kill' (harag, in Hebrew) and the other is 'murder' (ratzach in Hebrew).

The next time you hear someone cite, 'Do not kill' when quoting the sixth commandment, gently but firmly explain that it actually says, 'Do not murder.

With all our sophistication, the remarkable fact is that the Ten Commandments are more or less all we need.

We measure morality by what happens. Not what is intended.

Unless there is a God, all morality is just opinion and belief. And virtually every atheist philosopher has acknowledged this.

in his magisterial Modern Times, the secular West wrongly applied Einstein's theories of relativity to morality: Not only were time and motion relative, so were good and evil.

These three steps offer a classic presentation of the way people are often led to do wrong: Exaggerate, then denigrate the other side's motive, then promise a reward.

The god of compassion is NOT the god of justice.

However, one big obstacle to truth-telling is that believers in causes, including good causes, that don't place truth as a central value, will be very tempted to lie on behalf of their cause.

While individual human beings do enormous good, mankind has always been morally unimpressive.

People have too often valued "proper" religious beliefs more than proper moral behavior, and even slaughtered others for not having the right religious beliefs. This is a common occurrence even in our time.

The Ten Commandments are there to warn all of us that, with very few exceptions, such as the immediate saving of innocent life, no cause is more important than truth-telling. The Ten Commandments are the greatest list of instructions ever devised for creating a good society. But such a society cannot be created or maintained if it is not based on truth.

Therefore, there is no issue here of a holy text depicting people being ordered by their God to kill infidels or innocents.

Regarding morality, intentions matter little; and often, not at all. But when it comes to relating to God (prayer, ritual acts, etc.), intentions matter a great deal.

We live in a world in which people can do unbelievably beautiful or unbelievably horrible things to other people. And if those horrible acts argue against the existence of God, then the beautify acts must argue for God's existence.

Good societies can survive people doing immoral things. But a good society can not survive if it calls immoral things moral.

Happiness is a moral obligation.

The poor who commit murder, rape and robbery are not only not starving, they have far more material things than the word 'poverty' suggests.

Any moral system that is detached from God, no matter how noble and sincerely held, will likewise fail.

If doing the bad thing never brought benefits, no one would ever do

The most important thing to understand when it comes to our baser parts is not only how normal and natural it is to have them but that there is nothing wrong in having them. Bad is doing bad, not thinking bad (there are exceptions—see the next chapter), and it is certainly not merely having bad tendencies.

The laws of man are made only to be broken, because they are stupid and unjust.

Involuntary euthanasia – This is the most controversial way of hastened death, yet it goes on widely and secretly everywhere. Only the Dutch admit to it. It is sometimes necessary when a patient is suddenly, unexpectedly dying in agony, cannot communicate their wishes, and so the attending doctor administers a merciful end.