Quotes About Ethics

You have to give me something, Seafort. Politics is the art of the possible." Father gazed at the Station. "Sir, I can give you nothing. Morality is ... the art of the absolute.

In my mind, choice is the basis of Christianity, but the choice is not about sexuality, it is about how we treat other people. That is the choice about which we should be most concerned.

Is it all right to boil a sentient creature alive just for our gustatory pleasure?

Do something untoward and there is a good chance that it might be observed, recorded and, given time, judged.

Why should we not expect self-designated environmental leaders to practice what they preach?

I know what I'm talking about," she said sharply. "I'm Vice-President and a founding member of the Alliance for Ethical Lechery. Keeping an incubus is nothing less than sexual slavery.

Fearing a court martial for disobedience, some of the soldiers at My Lai participated in the massacre. Normative influence leads to compliance, especially for people who have recently seen others ridiculed or who are seeking to climb a status ladder (Hollander, 1958; Janes & Olson, 2000).

Mahatma Gandhi claimed that betting was a more pernicious evil than drinking.

I may be stupid, as you say, to believe in honour and friendship and loyalty without price. But these are virtues to be cherished, for without them we are no more than beasts roaming the land.

Never violate a woman, nor harm a child. Do not lie, cheat or steal. These things are for lesser men. Protect the weak against the evil strong. And never allow thoughts of gain to lead you into the persuit of evil.

This is not a quote by me, but one of my favorites: "If you have integrity, nothing else matters. If you don't have integrity, nothing else matters.

Morality—like velocity—is relative. The determination of it depends on what the objects around you are doing. All one can do is measure one's position in relation to them; never can one measure one's velocity or morality in terms of absolutes.

99% of all lawyers give the rest of them a bad name.

As far back as 1912, John Muir had protested against the building of the Hetch Hetchy Dam with these words: "These temple destroyers, devotees of raging commercialism, seem to have a perfect contempt for Nature, and, instead of lifting their eyes to the God of the mountains, lift them to the Almighty Dollar.

Environmentalism or conservation or preservation, or whatever it should be called, is not a fact, and never has been. It is a job.

It's not just that some people get to break the rules—it's that loyalty to the organization is to some degree measured by one's willingness to pretend this isn't happening.

While opposing injustice nonviolently, he (Gandhi) insisted, is always morally superior to opposing it violently, opposing injustice violently is still morally superior to doing nothing to oppose it at all.

Even in the Bible, the admonition in the Ten Commandments not to 'covet thy neighbor's wife' clearly referred not to lust in one's heart (adultery had already been covered in commandment number seven), but to the prospect of taking her as a debt-peon—in other words, as a servant to sweep one's yard and hang out the laundry.

What is a debt, anyway? A debt is just the perversion of a promise. It is a promise corrupted by both math and violence.

There will always be at least a handful of people unscrupulous enough to take advantage of such a situation—and a handful is all it takes.

How can you have dignity in labor if you personally believe your job shouldn't really exist?

The problem is, the moment one starts framing things in terms of debt, people will inevitably start asking who really owes what to whom.

impudicitia in ingenuo crimen est, in servo necessitas, in liberto officium ("to be the object of anal penetration is a crime in the freeborn, a necessity for a slave, a duty for a freedman").

good' and 'evil' are concepts humans made up in order to compare ourselves with one another. It follows that arguing about whether humans are fundamentally good or evil makes about as much sense as arguing about whether humans are fundamentally fat or thin.