Quotes About Ethics

the end justifies the means. But the end and the means are one. And if the means did not contribute to human happiness, neither will the end.

Are you polluting the world or cleaning up the mess? You are responsible for your inner space; nobody else is, just as you are responsible for the planet.

You can have religion with spirituality. You can also have religion without spirituality.

when they identify relativism, the belief that there is no absolute truth to guide human behavior, as one of the evils of our times; but you won't find absolute truth if you look for it where it cannot be found: in doctrines, ideologies, sets of rules, or stories.

What drives my life is not the desire to get along with other people or make friends so much as a moral obligation to give back as much as—no, more than—I take. That's karma. It's really not so far from the Golden Rule: "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." Some

There's an old and honored tradition in exploration literature that you don't air your dirty laundry in print. Whatever bickering, name-calling, grudge nursing, and dark funks really took place on the expedition, they're nobody else's business.

I'll go even further and say that competitiveness in mountaineering is wrong. It's dangerous. Climbing should be personally motivated.

Morally, however, we had had absolutely no choice but to abort our summit try to help Thor and Chantal get down the mountain. That's why I find it so hard to stomach all the accounts in recent years—especially on Everest—of climbers ignoring others in trouble for fear a rescue effort would sabotage their own summit bids.

And there is a rule in every major religion, called the Golden Rule. Essentially: treat other people the way you'd like to be treated yourself. If we all did this, the whole world would work instantaneously. Praying, meditation—fine. But just follow the Golden Rule and the whole world works. Making the world work could be that simple.

You know, I don't believe that religions are religions. No, I believe they are philosophies with some good ideas and some fuckin' weird ones.

it has remained for man alone among all creatures to kill senselessly and wantonly for the mere pleasure of inflicting suffering and death.

All he knew was that he could not eat the flesh of this black man, and thus hereditary instinct, ages old, usurped the functions of his untaught mind and saved him from transgressing a worldwide law of whose very existence he was ignorant.

As you know I am not of Barsoom; your ways are not my ways, and I can only act in the future as I have in the past, in accordance with the dictates of my conscience and guided by the standards of mine own people.

And then again, had I declared myself I should have robbed the woman I love of the wealth and position that her marriage to Clayton will now insure to her. I could not have done that—could I, Paul?

In one respect at least the Martians are a happy people; they have no lawyers.

but if he lied a little he may be excused, for he lied in the service of a woman, and he lied like a gentleman.

Don't expect the material rewards of unrighteousness while engaged in the pursuit of truth.

Our world is going through a crisis of dehumanization, breakup of family life, a general loss of moral values.

The very good people did not convince me; I felt they'd never been tempted. But you knew; you understood; you felt the world outside tugging at one with all its golden hands - and you hated the things it asked of one; you hated happiness bought by disloyalty and cruelty and indifference. That was what I'd never known before - and it's better than anything I've known.

Perhaps I might have resisted a great temptation, but the little ones would have pulled me down

She wanted, passionately and persistently, two things which she believed should subsist together in any well-ordered life: amusement and respectability.

But you knew; you understood; you had felt the world outside tugging at one with all its golden hands--and yet you hated the things it asks of one; you hated happiness bought by disloyalty and cruelty and indifference. That was what I'd never known before--and it's better than anything I've known.

The idea that reading is a moral quality has unhappily led many conscientious persons to renounce their innocuous dalliance with light literature for more strenuous intercourse. These are the persons who make it a rule to read.

a certain measure of contempt was attached to men who continued their philandering after marriage. In the rotation of crops there was a recognised season for wild oats; but they were not to be sown more than once.