Quotes About Ethics

Where is the line? We're taught to stand up for ourselves; we're taught to stand up for others we care about. But all of a sudden, there's a new line drawn by the law. You sit back, it says, and let us deal with this.

But we can't make policies based on religion when religion means different things to different people. Which leaves science. The science of reproduction is what it is. Conception is conception. You can decide the ethical value that has for you, based on your own relationship with God…but the policies around basic human rights with regard to reproduction shouldn't be up for interpretation.

Is it really lying if all you're doing is keeping your mouth shut, about something that's nobody's business anyway?

desperate people often do things that they normally would not do

Only cheats go back on a promise.

what's morally right is considered wrong...and what's morally wrong, you can get away with.

Power isn't doing something terrible to someone who's weaker than you, Reiner. It's having the strength to do something terrible, and choosing not to.

It's got to be a nice life, long as you don't get caught.

there are just some people you cannot find the good in. But who am I to decide if someone should be killed for murdering a child...instead of for murdering a drug addict during a deal that went bad...or even if we should be killing the inmate himself? I'm not smart enough to be able to say which life is worth more than the other. I don't know if anyone is.

Is his work vengeance? Or Justice? There is the finest line between the two and when i try to focus on it, it becomes less and less clear.

The worst part about being a prosecutor, in Matt Houlihan's opinion, 2as that even when you won, you didnt. The world was too black and white for that. ... It was like securing the bull after he'd careened through the china shop - yes, you could pen him for a whole, but you still incurred the cost of the mess he'd left in his wake.

Forgiveness is spiritual. Punishment is legal. They're not mutually exclusive.

May be the question we need to ask isn't whether there's any fresh twenty first century sin...but whether the people who define sin have changed, because of the times.

Morally, no one has the right to judge anyone else. But legally, it's not a right - it's a responsibility.

What is ethical to a lawyer differs from what's ethical to the rest of the world.

Louie's final thought before he passed out was that this was indeed some crazy world, where the waiting period to get an abortion was longer than the waiting period to get a gun.

It's easy to say you will do what's right and shun what's wrong, but when you get close enough to any given situation, you realize that there is no black or white. There are gradations of gray.

I like the word 'evil'. Scramble it a little and you will get 'vile' and 'live'. 'Good', on the other hand, is just a command to 'go do'.

Ms. Cormier, who has the right to judge someone else? Well, she said. That depends on whether you're judging in a moral sense or a legal sense. Morally, no one has the right to judge anyone else. But legally, its not a right-it's a responsibility.

The best thing is what you think should be done. The rightest thing is what needs to be done-when you think not just of you and how you feel, but also the extra stuff-who else is involved, and what's happened before, and what the rules say.

A trial, it often came down to who had the best story.

Since when does anyone get the option to do what's easiest?

I'm telling you, if aliens landed on earth today and took a good hard look at why babies get born, they'd conclude that most people have children by accident, or because they drink too much on a certain night, or because birth control isn't one hundred percent, or for a thousand other reasons that really aren't very flattering.

You can't buy a clean conscience.