Quotes About Ethics

ought to be seated on an eminence. If it be opened through virtue, let it be remembered, too, that virtue is never tried but by some difficulty and some struggle.

It is better to cherish virtue and humanity, by leaving much to free will . . . than to attempt to make men mere machines and instruments of a political benevolence.

Enquanto a vergonha mantiver sua vigia, a virtude não será inteiramente extinta do coração, nem a moderação será totalmente exilada das mentes dos tiranos.

Criminal means once tolerated are soon preferred.

Men have no right to what is not reasonable, and to what is not for their benefit.

É melhor valorizar a virtude e humanidade, deixando muito ao livre-arbítrio, mesmo com alguma perda para o objeto, do que tentar tornar os homens meras máquinas e instrumentos de uma benevolência política.

The restraints on men, as well as their liberties, are to be reckoned among their rights.

If I cannot have reform without injustice, I will not have reform.

It only needs a good man to do nothing for evil to triumph.

all virtues are not equally becoming to all men and at all times.

The true lawgiver ought to have an heart full of sensibility. He ought to love and respect his kind, and to fear himself.

The restraints on men, as well as their liberties, are both to be reckoned among their rights.

To speak of atrocious crime in mild language is treason to virtue.

There is no qualification for government but virtue and wisdom, actual or presumptive.

We are not made at once to pity the oppressor and the oppressed.

Who but a tyrant (a name expressive of every thing which can vitiate and degrade human nature) could think of seizing on the property of men, unaccused, unheard, untried, by whole descriptions, by hundreds and thousands together?

None of us has the right to assess the value of a human existence. All must be held valuable, or none. The death of Christ and the death of Socrates, Fen added dryly, suggest that our judgements are scarcely infallible...And the evil of Nazism lay precisely in this, that a group of men began to differentiate between the value of their fellow-beings, and to act on their conclusions. It isn't a habit which I, for one, would like to encourage.

Although in the West yoga is usually thought of as a series of stretch exercises, it actually embraces a broad philosophy of life and an elaborate system for personal transformation. This system includes ethical precepts, a vegetarian diet, the familiar stretches or postures, specific practices for directing and controlling the breath, concentration practices, and deep meditation.

Theodore Senior belonged to a class and a generation that considered politics to be a dirty business, best left, like street cleaning, to malodorous professionals.

Man with the Muckrake

To be neutral13 between right and wrong is to serve wrong.

It is not22 a good thing for a country to have a professional yodeler, a human trombone like Mr. Bryan as secretary of state, nor a college president with an astute and shifty mind, a hypocritical ability to deceive plain people … and no real knowledge or wisdom concerning internal and international affairs as head of the nation.

Most of the members are positively corrupt, and the others are really singularly incompetent.

We must never exercise our rights either wickedly or thoughtlessly; we can continue to preserve them in but one possible way, by making the proper use of them.