Quotes About Ethics

As a good rule of thumb, if you have to lie, you might be doing something wrong.

It is sweet and right to die for your country…. an old and dangerous lie. It might be necessary, but it is never sweet and rarely right. It's a tragedy.

Rules meant order. Without them they'd be killing each other. It began with butting in, with parking in disabled spaces, with smoking in elevators. And it ended in murder.

Why do decent young men and women become bullies? Why do soldiers dream of being heroes but end up abusing prisoners and shooting civilians? Why do politicians become corrupt? Why do cops beat suspects senseless and break the laws they're meant to protect?

Oscar Wilde said that conscience and cowardice are the same thing. What stops us from doing horrible things isn't our conscience but the fear of getting caught.

He was tired of the tyranny of the greater good.

A therapist has to have clear boundaries, even with former clients. People already get into our heads—if they also get into our lives, there's a problem.

A brave man in a brave country. It was easy to be brave, when the country was also brave. But what happened if it wasn't? If it was corrupt, and grotesque, and greedy, and violent?

conscience is not necessarily a good thing. How many gays are beaten, how many abortion clinics bombed, how many blacks lynched, how many Jews murdered, by people just following their conscience?

There is a higher court than courts of justice and that is the court of conscience. It supersedes all other courts.

The banality of evil. It wasn't the frothing madman. It was the conscientious us.

Do no harm was part of Hippocrates's writing, but from a different text. On epidemics.

There was nothing right or good in dying for your country. A necessity, sometimes, yes. But always a tragedy. Not an aspiration.

He was reminded again what Abbie Hoffman had said: We must eat what we kill. That would put an end to war.

It would be natural for some to feel that pressure and choose speed over quality. And try to hide it when something goes wrong. Not because they're bad people, but because they're people. That way lies tragedy.

it didn't feel wrong. It felt wretched. Horrific. A nightmare. But sometimes "right" felt like that.

That any decent person would've refused to participate in the Holocaust.

Conscience. Imagine being pursued by your own conscience….A mountain of conscience. Throwing a lengthening shadow. Growing. Darkening.

He expected people to play fair. Rules meant order. Without them they'd be killing each other. It began with butting in, with parking in disabled spaces, with smoking in elevators. And it ended in murder.

The senior council couldn't allow me to disobey orders and get away with it. This is their punishment. And it's right. Just as what I did was right.

He hated firearms. Their only purpose was to kill people.

He knew she was right. But he could also feel his own conscience stirring. Accusing him of following the law, in lockstep. And marching right past common sense. Katie Evans was dead.

If this was the right thing to do, why did it feel so wrong? But no, it didn't feel wrong. It felt wretched. Horrific. A nightmare. But sometimes 'right' felt like that.

A barometer of a moral deficit.