Quotes About Ethics

So, to praise others for their virtues can but encourage one's own efforts.

The moral virtues, then, are produced in us neither by nature nor against nature. Nature, indeed, prepares in us the ground for their reception, but their complete formation is the product of habit.

Every one suspects himself of at least one of the cardinal virtues.

Modesty seldom resides in a breast that is not enriched with nobler virtues.

The virtues and vices are all put in motion by interest.

Our virtues are often, in reality, no better than vices disguised.

Though ambition itself be a vice, yet it is often times the cause of virtues.

If everyone were clothed with integrity, if every heart were just, frank, kindly, the other virtues would be well-nigh useless.

If there can be films about why hockey (and not just cricket) is cool, there can be a film or two about the virtues of honest, hard work.

I'm very much a Christian in ideals and ethics, especially in terms of belief in fairness, a deep set obligation to others, and the virtues of charity, tolerance and generosity that we associate with traditional Christian teaching.

To argue about justice is unavoidably to argue about virtues, about substantive moral and even spiritual questions.

Though ambition in itself is a vice, yet it is often the parent of virtues.

In this era in which we live, the old-fashioned virtues grow increasingly unpopular.

When you rely on incentives, you undermine virtues. Then when you discover that you actually need people who want to do the right thing, those people don't exist because you've crushed anyone's desire to do the right thing with all these incentives.

Crimes, like virtues, are their own rewards.

You can't have virtue without sin. What I'm after is having my characters' virtues defined by how they operate in a very sinful environment. That's how you test people.

The way to put oneself in a position to take the harder, more honorable political path is to argue for one's virtues in a vigorous way.

It is always one's virtues and not one's vices that precipitate one into disaster.

Industry, economy, honesty, and kindness form a quartet of virtues that will never be improved upon.

The being cannot be termed rational or virtuous, who obeys any authority, but that of reason.

What the statesman is most anxious to produce is a certain moral character in his fellow citizens, namely a disposition to virtue and the performance of virtuous actions.

There is no cure for the pride of a virtuous nation but pure religion.

What innocence, may I ask, is being played here when it is known that this virtuous damsel has already got a dozen illegitimate children?

I am not virtuous. Our sons will be if we shed enough blood to give them the right to be.