Quotes About Ethics

Honour, not honours.

We may not all break the Ten Commandments, but we are certainly all capable of it. Within us lurks the breaker of all laws, ready to spring out at the first real opportunity.

Liberty for wolves is death to the lambs.

he makes a vast contrast between nature, which is this elemental, capricious, perhaps causal, perhaps chance-directed entity, and man, who has morality, who distinguishes between desire and will, duty and interest, the right and the wrong, and acts accordingly, if need be against nature.

To realise the relative validity of one's convictions and yet stand for them unflinchingly is what distinguishes a civilised man from a barbarian.

Creer en el determinismo entrañaría una aterradora pérdida de los conceptos con que discutimos la moral, por ejemplo, el elogio, la censura, el lamento o el perdón.

Immanuel Kant, un uomo lontanissimo dall'irrazionalismo, osservò una volta che "dal legno storto dell'umanità non si è mai cavata una cosa diritta". È questo il motivo per cui nessuna soluzione perfetta è possibile nelle cose umane - non già soltanto in pratica, ma in linea di principio - e ogni serio tentativo di metterla in atto è destinato con ogni probabilità a produrre sofferenza, delusione e fallimento.

For Rousseau), the ancient conflict (between liberty and authority) is to be resolved by breeding a race of men who will choose absolutely freely only that which is absolutely right.... there would be no conflict, no agony, no choice.

Science cannot destroy the consciousness of freedom, without which there is no morality and no art, but it can refute it.

Out of the crooked timber of humanity, nothing completely straight was ever made

philosophical concepts nurtured in the stillness of a professor's study could destroy a civilization....but if professors can truly wield this fatal power, may it not be that only other professors, or, at least, other thinkers can alone disarm them?

Sometimes, honesty really wasn't the best policy. Or, at least, it wasn't the kindest policy.

An Albanian's house is the dwelling of God and the guest.' Of God and the guest, you see. So before it is the house of its master, it is the house of one's guest. The guest, in an Albanian's life, represents the supreme ethical category, more important than blood relations. One may pardon the man who spills the blood of one's father or of one's son, but never the blood of a guest.

I was suddenly stricken with a feeling of black despair, hopelessly muddled by what was right and wrong. Nothing seemed clear cut; we did evil in the name of good, and good was done in the name of evil. [Chapter 27, page 306]

It is interesting that the worst retellings of traditional fairy tales are those that heavy-handedly take the step of making a moral point.

Their successors, instead of ruling for the good of their subjects, tyrannize for their own; and they met with the fate of tyrants. No person not reckless of the past could wish to imitate them. The earlier and the later experiences of Athens prove, in fact, two things: that Attica produces good men, and that empire spoils them.

Jews know that although they may make a vow to do something or to refrain from something, they can annul their vow. What most Jews do not know is that, as stated previously, biblical law forbids nullification: once a person makes a vow the person must keep it. It was only in post-biblical times that the rabbis changed the law to allow vow repeals.

Selfishness is the only real atheism; unselfishness the only real religion.

Don't kill!... The fly is asking you To save his life By rubbing his hands together

The wise and sagacious men of ancient times had the very spirit of the martial and did not kill.

Selfish thoughts are born from a mind bent on its own profit. And when you think only about your own profit, you will not think twice about how you harm others. In the end, you will create perversity, generate evil, and even destroy your own body.

You're the absolute protagonist of this book, very well; but do you believe that gives you the right to have carnal relations with all the female characters?

sólo intentaba hacer bien lo que le parecía bien hacer,

only by having a clear idea what virtue is can I practice evil with a light heart.