Quotes About Ethics

It's hard to resist a bad boy who's a good man.

I don't kick a man when he's down, unless I'm the one who put him down in the first place. I don't put him down unless he deserves it. And I don't break my word if I give it. So I'll give you my word.

Nevertheless, in constructing machines, it is often very important for us to extend to them certain human attributes which are not found among the lower members of the animal community. If the reader wishes to conceive this as a metaphoric extension of our human personalities, he is welcome to do so; but he should be cautioned that the new machines will not stop working as soon as we have stopped giving them human support.

Nothing is more powerful than an individual acting out of his conscience, thus helping to bring the collective conscience to life

An ambassador', quipped Sir Henry Wootton, 'is an honest man sent to lie abroad for the good of his country.

So long as men slaughter animals,' the master said, 'they won't stop killing each other.'1 [KONOPI?TE]

The sublimity of wisdom is to do those things living, which are to be desired when dying.

In ethics [Aristotle] had two bright ideas. First, that extreme behavior of selfishness and self-sacrifice don't work for most people; look for the golden mean. Second, good behavior is not a result of either sudden inspiration or harsh control. It is a habitual pattern, which means slow and steady conditioning: 'One swallow does not make a summer,' nor does one good deed make ethical behavior.

The actions, thoughts, and words of each of us are important. All of us together are making the world. So we have to ask ourselves: "How am I living? What kind of actions am I taking? Am I a force for good in the world or am I just another person doing nothing to help and therefore making things worse?

Do not compare" is the mantra of moral blackmailers.

The Holocaust industry has always been bankrupt. What remains is to openly declare it so.

Ronald Reagan once quipped, "I've noticed all those in favor of abortion are already born." Indeed, all pro-abortionists would become pro-life immediately if they found themselves back in the womb.

a perfectly just God must punish bad deeds regardless of how many good ones someone has performed.

The highest freedom is the freedom from evil, not the freedom of doing evil.

the Moral Law is not always the standard by which we treat others, but it is nearly always the standard by which we expect others to treat us.

If we teach students that there is no right and wrong, why are we surprised when a couple of students gun down their classmates or a teenage mother leaves her baby in a trash can?

I showed that privacy was an implicit right in Jewish law, probably going back to the second or third century, when it was elaborated on in a legal way.

I think the greater responsibility, in terms of morality, is where leadership begins.

Rather, it is the ontological shadowland of "nonhuman others" that must be vindicated. In this quasi-theology, to enter the state of domination/damnation we needn't act to evil effect, deliberately or otherwise. Our "knowledge" is sufficient to condemn us. "Modern science" itself is the source of the evil taint. To know is to be guilty of dominating what is known.

This tendency, greatly amplified, characterizes many of the more uncompromising biophilic thinkers who, in trying to construe love of nature as an ethical, rather than merely an esthetic, imperative, become ensnared in the constraints of their own subjectivity.21 These they mistake for sacred law. The most damning thing about this brand of nature worship is that it leads to outright contempt for scientific rationality.

Needless to say, dualistic thinking is nonetheless commonplace. In Western society, until recently, the overriding tendency was to accord a moral dignity to the "human" which elevated it above the merely natural. Of course this was done by associating humanity with an even higher realm inhabited by God, the angels, the saints, and so forth.

Our task as science educators is to ensure that discussions of values and ethics in science become models of rational inquiry rather than verbal free-for-ails where uninformed individuals generate more heat than light as they share mutual ignorance.8's

The great virtues were that mathematics remained rigorously free from emotional content, free from ethical content, and free from political content. It allowed people to try to rise to the top by being reasoning scientists and scholars, instead of being bullying politicians or priests.

The final purpose of art is to intensify, even, if necessary, to exacerbate, the moral consciousness of people.