Quotes About Ethics

All such advances require only that we live by the principles we claim to espouse but have too long ignored...

There can be no justice so long as rules are absolute.

How awful, that an honest man should feel compelled to travel such crooked paths!

they tortured him because there is nothing better than torture to make something evil turn good. Insert sarcastic tone here.

We're not going to cheat," I said. "Unless we can do so without breaking the rules. Besides

It is a sin to hurt someone, so by avoiding violence we do not sin ourselves and by stopping an opponent from hurting us, we prevent him from sinning.

What makes an action positive or negative? Not how it looks, not whether it is big or small, but it is the positive or negative motivation that is behind it. No matter how many teachings that you have heard, to be motivated by ordinary concerns, such as a desire for greatness, fame or whatever, is not the way of the true Dharma.

I thought of something I learned from reading Crazy Horse: The Strange Man of the Oglalas by Mari Sandoz. Crazy Horse believes that he will be victorious in battle, but if he stops to take spoils from the battlefield, he will be defeated. He tattoos lightning bolts on the ears of his horses so the sight of them will remind him of this as he rides. I tried to apply this lesson to the things at hand, careful not to take spoils that were not rightfully mine.

There is no pure good, no pure evil, only purity.

Crazy Horse believes that he will be victorious in battle, but if he stops to take spoils from the battlefield, he will be defeated. He tattoos lightning bolts on the ears of his horses so the sight of them will remind him of this as he rides. I tried to apply this lesson to the things at hand, careful not to take spoils that were not rightfully mine.

I believed he would once again embrace the knowledge that there is no pure evil, nor pure good, only purity.

Build a good name. Keep your name clean. Don't make compromises, don't worry about making a bunch of money or being successful — be concerned with doing good work and make the right choices and protect your work. And if you build a good name, eventually, that name will be its own currency.

Parents may be free to become martyrs themselves, but it does not follow that they are free, in identical circumstances, to make martyrs of their children.

Jonas Salk tested early preparations of his polio vaccine in retarded children at the Polk State School outside of Pittsburgh. At the time of Salk's experiments, no one in the government, the public, or the media objected to such testing. Everyone did it. Hilary Koprowski, working for the pharmaceutical company Lederle Laboratories, put his experimental live polio vaccine into chocolate milk and fed it to several retarded children in Petaluma, California,

Shelving books incorrectly is as good as stealing them. It's almost worse.

But in the book," I say, "the mockingbird is supposed to be a symbol of innocence. That's why it's a sin to kill one." "Who says it's a symbol of innocence?" asks Mort. "Teachers," I tell him. "Book reviewers, critics --" "Wikipedia," Elena calls from behind the window display.

To leave the world a little better than you found it. That's the best a man can ever do.

For only the good doubt their own goodness, which is what makes them good in the first place. The bad know they are good, but the good know nothing. They spend their lives forgiving others, but they can't forgive themselves.

Good begets good; evil begets evil; and even if the good you give is met by evil, you have no choice but to go on giving better than you get. Otherwise-and these were Willy's exact words-why bother to go on living?

If you do not consider the man before you to be human, there are few restraints of conscience on your behavior towards him.

but a noble cause demanded noble behavior from its advocates, something finer and more self-controlled than run-of-the-mill insults and cheap, adolescent shots.

For if you do not consider the man before you to be human, there are few constraints of conscience on your behavior towards him.

We had to destroy the village in order to save it.

Shit is a serious business, and anyone caught dumping it in the streets is arrested. With