Quotes About Ethics

Look at the Germans, the most cultured and well mannered of people, and yet… Auschwitz, Treblinka, Bergen-Belsen. Given the same set of circumstances it could just as well have been the English

What did science ever do for the world, apart from make better ways of killing people?

We're all primitives underneath, that's why we had to invent God, to be the voice of our conscience, or we would be killing each other left, right and centre.

It's healthier for your soul to live outside and above a degraded moral code than within and beneath one.

Moral codes are useful only when we have descended to needing them.

One of these days, she said, I'm going to pull myself together for a while and think - try to determine what character of a woman I am, for, candidly, I do not know. By all the codes which I am acquainted with, I am a devilishly wicked specimen of the sex. But some way I can't convince myself that I am. I must think about it.

One of these days, she said, I'm going to pull myself together for a while and think—try to determine what character of a woman I am; for, candidly, I don't know. By all the codes which I am acquainted with, I am a devilishly wicked specimen of the sex. But some way I can't convince myself that I am. I must think about it.

A kind intention or a cruel intention made the act seem no less a crime...

you're doing the same thing I am, only more slowly, and less honestly. You drive a car; you use plastic products; you do whatever the hell you do knowing full well that it's contributing to the end of everyone, and a lot of other animals besides. So don't get all more-life-affirming-than-thou with me, missy, you're on your way out too. In a way, you could see me as he canary down a mine shaft, or maybe synecdoche, the small part representing the whole.

Other people's tragedies should not be the subject of idle conversation.

Do gooders don't interest me. They are the least interesting people on the planet.

War was so simple, wasn't it? Much simpler than justice.

But if the gods only cursed us, then we would hate them. And if they only blessed us, then—well, then we'd care nothing for their laws because we'd respect nothing but our own pleasure.

Actually, abortion is part of being a mother and of caring for children, because part of caring for children is knowing when it's not a good idea to bring them into the world.

Even if we all decided to define personhood to include fertilized eggs and embryos and fetuses, they would not have the right to use a woman's body against her will and at whatever cost to herself. Persons are not entitled to use one another like that: Even if I am the only person in the world who can save my child by donating a kidney, the decision is still mine to make.

No longer would the Post write such lines as one identified by Chal Roberts in his history of the paper: "Sam Jones, 24, Negro, was arrested for larceny yesterday." Overnight, he eliminated "freebies"—trips paid for by the government and free tickets for anything. Also, after just a few weeks on the job, he called in the police reporter, Al Lewis, to ask if he was having parking

I'm an atheist, and that's it. I believe there's nothing we can know except that we should be kind to each other and do what we can for people.

I get so tired of moral bookkeeping.

The whole effort for the past one hundred years has been to remove the moral responsibility from the individual and make him blame his own human wickedness on his society, but he helps to make his society, you see, and he will not take his responsibility for his part in it.

You save the whales and shoot the people, huh?

Brenda burst in. "Do you know what some people do? They charge something and wear it, and then take it back and say it didn't fit or something. The stores don't give 'em no trouble." Her father turned in a kind of roar. "I never heard such a fool thing in my life. Didn't you hear your mother tell you to shut your mouth, girl!

It's the principle of the thing, Jess . That's what you've got to understand. You have to stop people like that. Otherwise they turn into tyrants and dictators.

For though I was raised Protestant, my true religion is actually civility.

We are only as noble as our actions prove us to be.