Quotes About Ethics

When we pay for tutors and turn a blind eye to irresponsible behavior, whether it's cheating or not getting adequate sleep, are we fooling ourselves? When we tell our children we want them to have "options," is that really another way of saying that we want them to get the best possible grades, so they can go to the best possible college and graduate school, to prepare them for the best possible jobs, which disproportionately seem to be in the field of finance?

What is admired in one generation is abhorred in another. We cannot say who will survive the holocaust of memory… We are men only, a brief flare of the torch.

You ask a question that philosophers argue over," Chiron had said. "He is worth more to you, perhaps. But the stranger is someone else's friend and brother. So which life is more important?

Somebody has to be tireless, or the fast-buck operators would asphalt the entire coast, fill every bay, and slay every living thing incapable of carrying a wallet.

You said if X has something valuable and Y comes along and takes it away from him, and there is absolutely no way in the world X can ever get it back, then you come along and make a deal with X to get it back, and keep half. Then you just Ã¢â'¬Â¦ live on that until it starts to run out. Is that the way it is, really?

And you can sit out here in the hour before dawn, boy, and think virtuous thoughts and tell yourself how noble you are and all that shit, and you are going to lay back and hang on to the money, because that is the way the world keeps score. Not your way. Not lately.

It was a profession that fed on gossip.

Somebody has to be tireless, my boy, or the fast buck operators would asphalt the entire coast, fill every bay and slay every living thing incapable of carrying a wallet. And with my left hand I strike the occasional blow of culture.

That old honorary Cuban had simplified the question all to hell when he'd said that a moral act is something you feel good after. Conversely, you feel bad after an immoral act. But what about the act that is neither moral nor immoral, Papa? How are you supposed to feel then?

God and your folks give you the face you're born with, but you earn the one you die with.

What you feel good after one time, you feel rotten after the next. And it is difficult to know in advance. And morality shouldn't be experimental, I don't think.

I know of nothing more despicable and pathetic than a man who devotes all the hours of the waking day to the making of money for money's sake.

Tutti colpevoli, nessuno colpevole,' as the Italian saying has it: 'If everyone is guilty, no one is guilty.

There is an aesthetic dimension to virtue. In real life, as opposed to in celluloid, we are attracted to the good and repelled by the bad. Even the woman who says she prefers the archetypal 'bad boy' probably doesn't actually like it when he is bad toward her.

We have forgotten how to flex two mental muscles at the same time: the muscle of moral conviction and the muscle of compassion to all regardless of their morality.

The fact of the matter is that an honest man wont soil his hands with politics, and he's given no inducement to take public office." "That's true, a live man, nowadays, wants more money, needs more money than he can make honestly in public life. . . . Naturally the best men turn to other channels.

None are so busy as the fool and knave.

Memory relates to ethics as well as to spirituality (the distinction between ethics and spirituality is a Western one and does more harm than good). Memory places obligations upon you. The Israelites were to remember their experience of servitude in Egypt, and treat their servants accordingly.

The truth of the gospel is intended to free us to love God and others with our whole heart. When we ignore this heart aspect of our faith and try to live out our religion solely as correct doctrine or ethics, our passion is crippled, or perverted, and the divorce of our soul from the heart purposes of God toward us is deepened. The

Something has gone wrong in us, very wrong indeed. So wrong that we have to be told that joy is found not in having another man's wife, but in having our own. But the point is not the law; the point is the joy.

This is human nature: to find a morality that is comfortable and convenient and let it suffice for holiness.

This is human nature: to find a morality that is comfortable and convenient and let it suffice for holiness. But it is not. So you ride your bike to work, or drive a hybrid car—but

How can a man know he is one when his highest aim is minding his manners?

Life is never easy. There is work to be done and obligations to be met — obligations to truth, to justice, and to liberty.