Quotes About Ethics

After seeing work exploit and demolish the world, laziness seems like the mother of the virtues.

An ethics that does not command us to renounce is a crime against the dignity to which we should aspire and against the happiness which we can obtain.

If one only aspires to provide a growing number of persons with a growing number of goods, without worrying about the quality of the persons, or of the goods, then capitalism is the perfect solution.

Ethical rules vary; honour does not change. A man is noble if he prefers to fail rather than to debase the tools of his triumph.

To refute the new morality, all one needs to do is examine the faces of its aged devotees.

It is easy to believe that we partake of certain virtues when we share in the defects they imply.

Equality of opportunity" does not mean the possibility for all to be decent, but the right of all not to be decent.

Probablemente en otras épocas abundaron las porquerías tanto como en la nuestra, pero en ninguna tuvieron los discursos que las justifican y alaban popularidad semejante.

As they cannot be defined univocally, nor irrefutably demonstrated, so-called "human rights" serve as a pretext for the individual who rebels against a positive law. The individual has no more rights than the benefit that can be inferred from another's duty.

Damit das Individuum interessant sei, muß die Ethik sein Leben komplizieren.

Der moderne Mensch versucht mit der Unzucht, der Gewalt und der Niederträchtigkeit die Unschuld eines höllischen Paradieses zu schaffen.

There is nothing more common than to transform a duty that inconveniences us into an "ethical dilemma".

La norma ética nos prohíbe ver a los hombres como medios y al Hombre como fin.

Let us not expect the rebirth of civilization as long as man has not again learnt to feel humiliated when he devotes himself to economic tasks.

Between animal and man there is no barrier but a palisade of taboos.

God ends up being a parasite in souls where ethics predominates. The religious life begins when we discover that God is not a postulate of ethics, but the only adventure in which it is worth the trouble to risk ourselves.

Ni cristianismo ni paganismo, enseñan éticas altruistas. Tanto la moral cristiana, como la moral pagana, son individualismos éticos, que imponen deberes sociales, tan solo como medios de nuestra perfección terrestre o de nuestra salvación enigmática.

There are fewer ambitious individuals in the world today than individuals who believe they are morally obliged to be ambitious.

To say that freedom consists of something other than doing what we want is a lie. That it is proper, on the other hand, to limit freedom is an obvious fact. But deceit begins when they seek to identify freedom with the limitations they impose on it.

Though he knows he cannot win, the reactionary has no desire to lie.

Die Versuchung des Paganismus ist nicht die Immortalität, sondern der Moral. Ein ungläubiger Heide hat die Ethik erfunden.

Democrats can be divided into those who believe wickedness is curable and those who deny it exists.

Die Wahrheit des Menschen ist nichts weiter als eine aufrichtige Überzeugung. Wahrheit ist, was wir als Wahrheit beurteilen, nachdem wir die Gründe erwogen, die Argumente bedacht und unsere Überzeugung auf das breiteste Fundament der Aufrichtigkeit und Ehrlichkeit gestellt haben. Die Wahrheit ist eine Tugend - wie die Blüte, die manchen harten und knorrigen moralischen Wurzeln entstammt. Vielleicht sollte man in der Logik lediglich ein Kapitel der Ethik sehen.

Authority is not delegating men, but procuring values.