Quotes About Ethics

My Dear Son... remember that you are accountable to your Maker for all your words and actions.

The best index to a person's character is how he treats people who can't do him any good, and how he treats people who can't fight back.

Only the other world has substance and reality; only good deeds and holy learning have tangible worth.

Self-respect is the fruit of discipline...

To be or not to be is not the question, the vital question is how to be and how not to be…

We are forever asking Nature whether it has stopped beating its wife.

Whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally.

By general law life and limb must be protected; yet often a limb must be amputated to save a life; but a life is never wisely given to save a limb.

When I do good, I feel good, when I do bad, I feel bad, and that's my religion.

It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces; but let us judge not that we be not judged.

I am naturally anti-slavery. If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong. I can not remember when I did not so think, and feel.

Whether the owners of this species of property [slavery] do really see it as it is, it is not for me to say, but if they do, they see it as it is through 2,000,000,000 of dollars, and that is a pretty thick coating.

It has ever been my experience that folks who have no vices, have very few virtues.

I want it said of me by those who knew me best, that I always plucked a thistle and planted a flower where I thought a flower would grow.

Whenever there is a conflict between human rights and property rights, human rights must prevail.

The love of property and consciousness of right and wrong have conflicting places in our organization, which often makes a man's course seem crooked, his conduct a riddle.

I care not for a man's religion whose dog and cat are not the better for it.

I care not much for a man's religion whose dog and cat are not the better for it.

If there ever could be a proper time for mere catch arguments, that time surely is not now. In times like the present, men should utter nothing for which they would not willingly be responsible through time and in eternity.

I am for those means which will give the greatest good to the greatest number.

Those who would deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves; and, under a just God, cannot long retain it.

Whatever you are, be a good one.

When I do good, I feel good. When I do bad, I feel bad. That's my religion.

I would rather be a little nobody, then to be a evil somebody.