Quotes About Ethics

If there were any justice," said Shale, "one ought to be allowed to use ardent militarists for experiments in peacetime, if one uses pacifists in war. But I suppose they wouldn't volunteer.

You wish to put a positive construction on your deeds and words.

The best way to eliminate all suffering in the world would be to eliminate all sentient life. If there were no living things capable of feeling pain, then there would be no pain.

Central to Mill's approach throughout On Liberty is his 'Harm Principle', the idea that individual adults should be free to do whatever they wish up to the point where they harm another person in the process. Mill's principle is apparently straightforward: the only justification for interference with someone's freedom to live their life as they choose is if they risk harming other people.

If you do something just because of how you feel that is not a good action at all.

Mill was very clear on this point: offence should not be confused with harm.

Instead of looking to increase our pleasure in life, they think, we should try to become better people and do the right thing. That is what makes a life go well.

Users of slippery slope arguments should take skiing lessons—you really can choose to stop.

Allowables I killed a spider Not a murderous brown recluse Nor even a black widow And if the truth were told this Was only a small spider Sort of papery spider Who should have run When I picked up the book But she didn't And she scared me And I smashed her I don't think I'm allowed To kill something Because I am Frightened.

Rather face the consequences if the truth rather than the reprocussions of a lie

with thousands it's hard to be quite sinless, but to make millions is easy. A millionaire has no need to resort to crooked ways. Just go on and take the straight road, take all that lies before you! No one else will pick it up.

Therefore, if it really be that you have no genuine love for doing good, do good by forcing yourself to do so.

I tell everyone very plainly that I take bribes, but what kind of bribes? Why, greyhound puppies. That's a totally different matter.

I don't believe there is any such definition, there is no such thing as evil, only moral judgments based on what society believes to be wrong behavior.

Or should you mourn the rapist, which I guess Christians mourn the people who kill them too.

Individuals must take responsibility for their choices and cannot hide behind convention or rules.

the Purpose of a company should automatically come down to balancing the demands of stakeholders or constituencies. In real life, this is already the way companies are managed. Corporate directors have to balance demands in the short run—from customers, workers, shareholders, community and so on—or they will find themselves out of business or in jail. Companies

If a company's reputation-building efforts appear to be somehow separate from its business model, then you suspect they are primarily a corrective to its naturally amoral or immoral inclinations—a medicine to relieve the symptoms but not a cure for the basic disease.

Act only on the maxim which you can will as a law for all rational beings," and "Act so as to treat rational beings always as ends in themselves and never as means only." Kant

competition between companies is at least in part a competition between different moral ideas.

Niall Fitzgerald, former chairman of Unilever, has pointed out that social responsibility is good business because "we need a constant flow of talented people Ã¢â'¬Â¦ [who] ask themselves if this is an organization whose values they share."6

Ethics are more important than ever before to a company's reputation with customers, investors, potential recruits and indeed its own staff. And

The ultimate reason for an action is thus that it increases happiness.18 More

A worthy man is not always a holy man.