Quotes About Ethics

It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied. And if the fool, or the pig, are of a different opinion, it is because they only know their own side of the question.

If moral reflection consists in seeking a fit between the judgments we make and the principles we affirm, how can such reflection lead us to justice, or moral truth?

Honesty is the best policy. It's also the most profitable.

A carefully crafted evasion pays homage to the duty of truth-telling in a way that an outright lie does not. Anyone who goes to the bother of concocting a misleading but technically true statement when a simple lie would do expresses, however obliquely, respect for the moral law.

It is said that the Puritans banned bearbaiting, not because of the pain it caused the bears but because of the pleasure it gave the onlookers.

El Estado no debería ratificar —con sus políticas o sus leyes— ninguna concepción determinada de la vida buena, sino proporcionar un marco neutral de derechos, dentro del cual las personas puedan escoger sus propios valores y fines.

Some see in our rancorous politics a surfeit of moral conviction: too many people believe too deeply, too stridently, in their own convictions and want to impose them on everyone else. I think this misreads our predicament. The problem with our politics is not too much moral argument but too little. Our politics is overheated because it is mostly vacant, empty of moral and spiritual content. It fails to engage with big questions that people care about.

ancient theories of justice start with virtue, while modern theories start with freedom. And

Outrage is the special kind of anger you feel when you believe that people are getting things they don't deserve. Outrage of this kind is anger at injustice.

The most obvious reason for giving the best flutes to the best flute players is that doing so will produce the best music, making us listeners better off. But this is not Aristotle's reason. He thinks the best flutes should go to the best flute players because that's what flutes are for—to be played well.

greed that preys on human misery (...)

Government may not interfere with individual liberty in order to protect a person from himself, or to impose the majority's beliefs about how best to live. The only actions for which a person is accountable to society, Mill argues, are those that affect others. As long as I am not harming anyone else, my "independence is, of right, absolute. Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign."19

Markets express and promote certain attitudes to the goods being exchanged.

Conformity, in Mill's account, is the enemy of the best way to live.

For Aristotle, politics is about something higher. It's about learning how to live a good life.

La concepción tecnocrática de la política está ligada a una fe en los mercados; no necesariamente en un capitalismo sin límites, de laissez faire, pero sí en la idea más general de que los mecanismos de mercado son los instrumentos primordiales para conseguir el bien público.

In short, Hegel argued that the capitalist organization of work emerging in his time could be ethically justified only on two conditions, described succinctly by Honneth: "first, it must provide a minimum wage; second, it must give all work activities a shape that reveals them to be a contribution to the common good."47

Taxation is not only a way of raising revenue; it is also a way of expressing a society's judgement about what counts as a valuable contribution to the common good

Depender de las grandes farmacéuticas significa pagar más por fármacos que salvan vidas.

Nó không d?y chúng ta cách phân bi?t Ä'úng sai, mà "ch? làm th? nào ?? tính toán gi?i hÆ¡n".

From Aristotle to the American republican tradition, from Hegel to Catholic social teaching, theories of contributive justice teach us that we are most fully human when we contribute to the common good and earn the esteem of our fellow citizens for the contributions we make.

Chúng ta là nô l? c?a sá»± ham mu?n và khát khao c?a chính mình

Tôi không có quy?n tÆ°á»›c Ä'o?t Ä'i m?ng s?ng c?a chính b?n thân tôi hay ng??i khác.

cuanto más nos concebimos como seres hechos a sí mismos y autosuficientes, más difícil nos resulta aprender gratitud y humildad. Y, sin estos dos sentimientos, cuesta mucho preocuparse por el bien común.