Quotes About Ethics

Philosophy can make people sick.

Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.

All other love is extinguished by self-love; beneficence, humanity, justice, philosophy, sink under it.

No philosophy based on an incorrect view of the nature of man is likely to produce social good.

We need a moral philosophy in which the concept of love, so rarely mentioned now by philosophers, can once again be made central.

Devotion to the truth is the hallmark of morality; there is no greater, nobler, more heroic form of devotion than the act of a man who assumes the responsibility of thinking.

I have gained this from philosophy: that I do without being commanded what others do only from fear of the law.

Empty is the argument of the philosopher which does not relieve any human suffering.

Discontent is the seed of ethics.

Without man and his potential for moral progress, the whole of reality would be a mere wilderness, a thing in vain, and have no final purpose.

In any compromise between food and poison, it is only death that can win. In any compromise between good and evil, it is only evil that can profit.

Men are not allowed to think freely about chemistry and biology: why should they be allowed to think freely about political philosophy?

The best philosophers were not academics, but had another job, so their philosophy was not corrupted by careerism.

It is not reason that gives us our moral orientation, it is sensitivity.

The excellence of a thing is related to its proper function.

Remove severe restraint and what will become of virtue?

Philosophy is not best expressed in words; it is expressed in the choices one makes.

Philosophy is the highest music.

An attempt to achieve the good by force is like an attempt to provide a man with a picture gallery at the price of cutting out his eyes.

People look for morals in fiction because there has always been a confusion between fiction and philosophy.

Philosophy ... must not bargain away anything of the emphatic concept of truth.

Philosophy is an elegant thing, if anyone modestly meddles with it; but if they are conversant with it more than is becoming, it corrupts them.

The philosopher whose dealings are with divine order himself acquires the characteristics of order and divinity.

Violence begins with the fork.