Quotes About Ethics

There are two parts to the human dilemma. One is the belief that the end justifies the means. That push-button philosophy, that deliberate deafness to suffering, has become the monster in the war machine. The other is the betrayal of the human spirit: the assertion of dogma that closes the mind, and turns a nation, a civilization, into a regiment of ghosts--obedient ghosts or tortured ghosts.

to terrify children with hell is that good for the world

Ugly is how someone acts, not how they look.

I suspect that the vast majority of people, not knowing in advance whether they will either end up in a permanently vegetative state or be diagnosed with cancer, would prefer that any resources that would be spent on PVS care be reallocated to cancer research--or some similar enterprise that has the potential to help human beings who might actually recover.

While the visible victims may draw the headlines and attract indignant protests from so-called "pro-life" organizations, the invisible victims are people like you and me who will suffer from diseases that are never cured because funds are being poured down a healthcare sieve in order to maintain permanently-unconscious bodies on complex and costly forms of life support.

There is a fundamental difference, however, between asking to be permitted to keep a vegetative relative on costly machinery, and asking the taxpayers or society as a whole to pay for such machinery.

I am grateful that I have rights in the proverbial public square--but, as a practical matter, my most cherished rights are those that I possess in my bedroom and hospital room and death chamber.

Much as we do not permit convicted pedophiles to teach kindergarten or convicted hijackers to board airplanes, common sense dictates that individuals who have been imprisoned for plotting violence against abortion clinics should never again be permitted anywhere near such facilities.

Depression and hopelessness are not the only reasons terminally ill patients wish to end their lives. Many individuals see nothing undignified about choosing to end their lives at the time and manner of their choosing and many view such a choice as the meaningful culmination of a good life.

Oh, God! That bread should be so dear, And flesh and blood so cheap!

It is my observations, though, that happiness limits the amount of suffering one is willing to inflict upon others

I'm not really interested in the black and white, the 'goodies and baddies.' I find the complexity of the gray areas more compelling, more intriguing. As I have said before, there are angels and demons in all of us, and I am interested in the relationship between the two within the 'ordinary' person.

the state is not immoral but amoral; half of it exists outside morality

The prince] dare not let ethics keep him from doing whatever evil must be done to preserve himself and the state.

I cannot respond to the call, the request, the obligation, or even the love of another, without sacrificing the other other, the other others

A major fact of our present civilization is that more and more sin becomes collective, and the individual is forced to participate in collective sin.

The computer is an enigma. Not in its making or its usage, but because man appears incapable of foreseeing anything about the computer's influence on society and humanity. We have most likely never dealt with such an ambiguous apparatus, an instrument that seems to contain the best and the worst, and, above all, a device whose true potentials we are unable to scrutinize.

From an analytic point of view, the only thing one can be guilty of is having given ground relative to one's desire (Seminar 7, 319)

My thesis is that the moral law is articulated with relation to the real as such, to the real insofar as it can be the guarantee of the Thing.

If books were judged by the bad uses man can put them to, what book has been more misused than the Bible?

?lovek si musí teda sám pre seba ur?i?, ktoré najvyššie dobro je jeho š?astím. musí si zvoli? svoje š?astie, alebo teda najvyššie dobro, a osud jeho mravného života závisí na tom, ?i jeho vo?ba je alebo nie je v zhode s tým, ?o v takom prípade požaduje pravda

Armadas con todos los poderes, disfrutando de todas las riquezas que deben a la Ciencia, nuestras sociedades intentan aún vivir y enseñar sistemas de valores arruinados ya, en su raíz, por esta misma ciencia.

interviewer - would you have defended adolf hitler? jacques verges - hell, i'd have even defended bush, as long as he pleads guilty!

There are no free lunches in philosophy any more than in real life.