Quotes About Ethics

Criminals are never very amusing. It's because they're failures. Those who make real money aren't counted as criminals. This is a class distinction, not an ethical problem.

Man is the only animal that laughs and weeps; for he is the only animal that is struck with the difference between what things are, and what they ought to be. WILLIAM HAZLITT

It is no great feat to burn a little man. It is a great achievement to persuade him. ERASMUS, LETTER

For at this juncture, the West has cut itself off from its own Jewish and Christian roots—the faith, the ideas, the ethics and the way of life that made it the West. It now stands deeply divided, uncertain of its post-Christian identity, and with its dominance waning in the global era.

There are no foolproof methods of persuasion, and those that come closest are coercive and dangerous because they override the will rather than convince the mind.

Thus a good man, though a slave, is free; but a wicked man, though a king, is a slave. For he serves, not one man alone, but, what is worse, as many masters as he has vices. ST. AUGUSTINE, CITY OF GOD

what matters for each of us is the adequacy and truth of what we come to believe is the meaning of life—and therefore the source from which we derive our sense of identity, purpose, ethics and community.

Hypocrisy is the homage that vice pays to virtue." Rochefoucauld's maxim

This means that, bad though it is and dangerous though its slipway may prove, there is a sense in which hypocrisy may be preferable to wickedness. Hypocrisy still cares enough about virtue to want to pretend to be virtuous, or at least it recognizes that the society around still prizes virtue enough to make it worth flattering.

Either we conform our desires to the truth or we conform the truth to our desires.

Living itself is the source of sin.

Victims. Victims of a transitional period of morality. That is what we both certainly are.

God, I ask you. Is trustfulness a sin?

Actions punishable by jail sentences are not the only crimes. If we knew the antonym of crime, I think we would know its true nature. God . . . salvation . . . love . . . light. But for God there is the antonym Satan, for salvation there is perdition, for love there is hate, for light there is darkness, for good, evil. Crime and prayer? Crime and repentance? Crime and confession? Crime and ... no, they're all synonymous. What is the opposite of crime?

Scoundrels [...] simply don't die. The ones who die are always the gentle, sweet, and beautiful people. [...] Scoundrels live a long time. The beautiful die young.

A science which is postulated on the assumption that human beings are avaricious through all eternity is utterly devoid of point (whether in problems of distribution or any other aspect) to a person who is not avaricious.

Heaven forbid if beauty were to have substance. Genuine beauty is always meaningless, without virtue

Genuine beauty is always meaningless, without virtue.

Kurbanlar. gerçek bir ahlak döneminin kurbanlar?. Asl?nda her ikimiz de buyuz. Bir yerlerde devrim patlak verecek: Ama eski ahlak ölçüsü yolumuzu t?kayarak yeryüzünde de?i?mez biçimde duracak. Oysa denizde ne dalgalar patlar. Devrime kat?lmadan dipteki sular sakin, uyan?k ama uyu?mu? gibi durur.

There's nothing wrong in being a monster, is there? As long as we can stay alive?

Virtue and vice are concepts invented by human beings, words for a morality which human beings arbitrarily devised.

Extending discipline for the minority to everyone else at the same time seems particularly cruel. As I grow older, I have begun to understand more and more how ethics taught in school and public mores are two different things. Those who insist on keeping ethics in school look like fools. People think they're eccentric. They'll never succeed, they'll always be penniless.

Crime and Punishment. Dostoievski. These words grazed over a corner of my mind, startling me. Just supposing Dostoievski ranged 'crime' and 'punishment' side by side not as synonyms but as antonyms. Crime and punishment-- absolutely incompatible ideas, irreconcilable as oil and water. I felt I was beginning to understand what lay at the bottom of the scum-covered, turbid pond, that chaos of Dostoievski's mind--no, I still didn't quite see...

Crime and punishment. Dostoievski. These words grazed over a corner of my mind, startling me. Just supposing Dostoievski ranged 'crime' and 'punishment' side by side not as synonyms but as antonyms. Crime and punishment—absolutely incompatible ideas, irreconcilable as oil and water.