Quotes About Ethics

Those are just platitudes. Everyone has his own idea of "playing fair." "Does he? Try making up your own idea of what's fair--say, "giving the greatest rewards to the laziest workers"--and see how seriously people take you.

it is impossible to legislate without legislating morality. Try to think of a law that is not based on a moral idea; you won't be able to do it.

Yet our common moral knowledge is as real as arithmetic, and probably just as plain. Paradoxically, maddeningly, we appeal to it even to justify wrongdoing; rationalization is the homage paid by sin to guilty knowledge.

The goods of fidelity, for example, are plain and concrete to the man who has not strayed, but they are faint, like mathematical abstractions, to the one who is addicted to other men's wives.

If all meaning were relative, then the meanings of the terms in the proposition "All meaning is relative" would be relative. Therefore the proposition "All meaning is relative" destroys itself. It is nothing but an evasion of reality. That seems a high price to pay, even for the privilege of killing people.

Character is doing the right thing when nobody's looking. There are too many people who think that the only thing that's right is to get by, and the only thing that's wrong is to get caught.

Everyone tries to define this thing called Character. It's not hard. Character is doing what's right when nobody's looking.

What we need to make a more decent society is not a few Splendid Samaritans but millions of Minimally Decent Samaritans.

At the very root of the modern liberal movement is the loss of the consciousness of sin.

He that cannot decidedly say, "No," when tempted to evil, is on the highway to ruin. He loses the respect even of those who would tempt him, and becomes but the pliant tool and victim of their evil designs.

A good name is seldom regained. When character is gone, all is gone, and one of the richest jewels of life is lost.

I'd love to do a movie where the monster is human, where the issue is not otherworldly, or horror or science fiction.

Politics is not the art of the possible. It consists of choosing between the disastrous and the unpalatable.

It is our choices . . . that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.

Enter, stranger, but take heed Of what awaits the sin of greed, For those who take, but do not earn, Must pay most dearly in their turn. So if you seek beneath our floors A treasure that was never yours, Thief, you have been warned, beware Of finding more than treasure there.

We must all face the choice between what is right and what is easy.

It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.

No matter how brilliant a man may be, he will never engender confidence in his subordinates and associates if he lacks simple honesty and moral courage.

So my solution is simple. If you can't be held fully accountable for your actions, you need a keeper. Or to put it another way: if you're not grown-up enough to be trusted with a gun, you need a keeper. And the keeper — of the fetus, or the animal, or the tree, or the mental incompetent — is the one who is held responsible for the well-being of his charge, and for any liabilities resulting from its doings.

With respect to relationships within the church, the leader is to be above reproach. Detractors should not have a rung to stand on. If a charge is preferred against him, it fails because his life affords no grounds for reproach or indictment of wrongdoing. His adversary finds no opening for a smear campaign, rumor mongering, or gossip.

Our Lord never taught against the urge to high achievement, but He did expose and condemn unworthy motivation.

The employer generally gets the employees he deserves.

My father said: You must never try to make all the money that's in a deal. Let the other fellow make some money too, because if you have a reputation for always making all the money, you won't have many deals.

Loud indignation against vice often stands for virtue in the eyes of bigots.