Quotes About Ethics

There is no other story. A man, after he has brushed off the dust and chips of his life, will have left only the hard, clean questions: Was it good or was it evil? Have I done well—or ill?

Possibly the deep feeling is that if people learn to eat one another the food supply would be so generous and so available that no one would be either safe or hungry.

To the inner monster it must be even more obscure, since he has no visible thing to compare with others. To a man born without conscience, a soul-stricken man must seem ridiculous. To a criminal, honesty is foolish.

so to live that our death brings no pleasure to the world.

If two generous paths branch from the highroad of life and only one can be followed, who is to judge which is best?

And when one of our successful men had what he needed or wanted, he reassumed his virtue as easily as changing his shirt, and for all one could see, he took no hurt from his derelictions, always assuming that he didn't get caught.

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 the same thing. And some of the things folks do is nice, and some ain't nice, but that's as far as any man got a right to say.

in him kindness and conscience are so large that they are almost faults.

A knight without mercy is without honor.

It is easy out of laziness, out of weakness, to throw oneself into the lap of deity, saying, 'I couldn't help it; the way was set.' But think of the glory of the choice! That makes a man a man.

The french are a moral people--judged, that is, by american country club standards.

If something was untrue and you didn't know it, that was error. But if you knew a true thing and changed it to a false thing, both you and it were loathsome.

The bank is something else than men. 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.

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

The discipline of the written word punishes both stupidity and dishonesty.

We have only one story. All novels, all poetry are built on the never-ending contest in ourselves of good and evil.

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. I think this is the only story we have.

A girl was just a girl to you. They wasn't nothin' to you. But to me they was holy vessels. I was savin' their souls. An' here with all that responsibility on me I'd just get 'em frothin' with the Holy Sperit, an' then I'd take 'em out in the grass." "Maybe I should of been a preacher,'' said Joad.

There ain't no sin and there ain't no virtue. There's just stuff people do.

Timshel - thou mayest

To a man born without conscience, a soul-stricken man must seem ridiculous.

A farmer cannot think too much evil of a good farmer.

Difference between a lie and a story is that a story utilizes the trappings and appearance of truth for the interest of the listener as well as of the teller. A story has in it neither gain nor loss. But a lie is a device for profit or escape. I

He stared between his knees at the floor. "No," he said, "that's not my right. Nobody has the right to remove any single experience from another. Life and death are promised. We have a right to pain.