Quotes About Ethics

When people are engaged in something they are not proud of, they do not welcome witnesses. In fact, they come to believe the witness causes the trouble.

Fella in business got to lie an' cheat, but he calls it somepin else. That's what's important. You go steal that tire an' you're a thief, but he tried to steal your four dollars for a busted tire. They call that sound business.

And the girl,' Lanser continued, 'the girl, Lieutenant, you may rape her, or protect her, or marry her--that is of no importance so long as you shoot her when it is ordered.

And then we take a soldier and put murder in his hands and we say to him, Use it well, use it wisely.

The hell with it! There ain't no sin and there ain't no virtue. There's just stuff people do. It's all part of nice, but that's as far as any man got a right to say.

A man who is good for anything ought not to calculate the chance of living or dying; he only ought to consider whether he is doing right or wrong.

Fella had a team of horses, had to use'em to plow an' cultivate an' mow, wouldn't think a turnin' 'em out to starve when they wasn't workin'. Them's horses - we're men.

If there is no God, no devil, no heaven, no hell then therefore there are no rules.

When I was a kid my ol' man give me a haltered heifer an' says take her down an git her serviced. An' the fella says, I done it, an' ever' time since then when I hear a business man talkin' about service, I wonder who's gettin' screwed.

t]here ain't no sin and there ain't no virtue. There's just stuff people do. It's all part of the same thing.

Why, Jesus Christ, Ma, they comes a time when the on'y way a fella can keep his decency is by takin' a sock at a cop.

A man, after he has brushed off the dust and chips of his life, will have only the hard, clean questions: Was it good or was it evil? Have I done well--or ill?

Who wants to be good if he has to be hungry too?

It happens that every man in a bank hates what the bank does, and yet the bank does it. The bank is something more than men, I tell you. It's the monster. Men made it, but they can't control it.

Casy said solemnly, This here ol' man jus' lived a life an' just died out of it. I don't know whether he was good or bad, but that don't matter much. He was alive, an' that's what matters. An' now his dead, an' that don't matter...

I don't know where being a servant came into disrepute. It is the refuge of a philosopher, the food of the lazy, and, properly carried out, it is a position of power, even of love.

Suppose it were true—Adam, the most rigidly honest man it was possible to find, living all his life on stolen money. Lee laughed to himself—now this second will, and Aron, whose purity was a little on the self-indulgent side, living all his life on the profits from a whorehouse. Was this some kind of joke or did things balance so that if one went too far in one direction an automatic slide moved on the scale and the balance was re-established?

I am treasonable enough not to believe in the liberty of a man or a group to exploit, torment, or slaughter other men or groups. I believe in the despotism of human life and happiness against the liberty of money and possessions

Virtue is venerable as nothing else in this world is.

Humans are caught—in their lives, in their thoughts, in their hungers and ambitions, in their avarice and cruelty, and in their kindness and generosity too—in a net of good and evil.

The preacher rose high on his elbow. Law changes, he said, but 'got to's' go on. You got the right to do what you got to do.

Well, suppose there's a slight doubt that the boy should be in the army and we send him and he gets killed." "I see. Is it responsibility or blame that bothers you?" "I don't want blame." "Sometimes responsibility is worse. It doesn't carry any pleasant egotism.

Well, we all got to make a livin'. Yeah, Tom said. On'y I wisht they was some way to make her 'thout takin' her away from somebody else.

Here is individual responsibility and the invention of conscience. You can if you will but it is up to you. This little story(from the Bible)turns out to be one of the most profound in the world. I always felt it was,but now I know it is.