Quotes About Ethics

Excuse me for troubling your capraesque lives with this first-ever note of moral unclarity.

Each of us has a short ride on this earth and as long as we stay in our lane, and don't affect someone else's ride, we should be allowed to drive as we see fit.

Under what circumstances is it moral for a group to do that which is not moral for a member of that group to do alone?

Nothing he has ever done has been tainted by legality [Robert Moses quoting an anecdote about himself].

We're taught Lord Acton's axiom: all power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely. I believed that when I started these books, but I don't believe it's always true any more. Power doesn't always corrupt. Power can cleanse. What I believe is always true about power is that power always reveals.

In every election in which he ran—not only in college, but thereafter—he displayed a willingness to do whatever was necessary to win: a willingness so complete that even in the generous terms of political morality, it amounted to amorality.

That campaign raises, in fact, one of the greatest issues invoked by the life of Lyndon Baines Johnson; the relationship between means and ends. Many of the ends of Lyndon Johnson's life, civil rights, in particular, perhaps, but others too, were noble. Heroic advances in the cause of social justice....Those noble ends would not have been possible without the means, far from noble, that brought Johnson to power...To what extent are ends inseparable from means?

MR. CALHOUN.   Never, never. MR. WEBSTER.   What he means he is very apt to say. MR. CALHOUN.   Always, always. MR. WEBSTER.   And I honor him for it.

Pragmatism had shaded into the morality of the ballot box, a morality in which nothing matters but victory and any maneuver that leads to victory is justified—into a morality that is amorality.

The air of compromise is rarely appreciated fully by men of principle. C. Vann Woodward

How you behave toward cats here below determines your status in Heaven.

But goodness alone is never enough. A hard, cold wisdom is required for goodness to accomplish good. Goodness without wisdom always accomplishes evil.

I will accept any rules that you feel necessary to your freedom. I am free, no matter what rules surround me. If I find them tolerable, I tolerate them; if I find them too obnoxious, I break them. I am free because I know that I alone am morally responsible for everything I do.

To permit irresponsible authority is to sell disaster.

He's an honest politician--he stays bought.

Man has no moral instinct. He is not born with moral sense. You were not born with it, I was not - and a puppy has none. We acquire moral sense, when we do, through training, experience, and hard sweat of the mind.

Social responsibility above the level of family, or at most of tribe, requires imagination-- devotion, loyalty, all the higher virtues -- which a man must develop himself; if he has them forced down him, he will vomit them out.

The coldest depth of Hell is reserved for people who abandon kittens.

Darling, a true lady takes off her dignity with her clothes and does her whorish best. At other times you can be as modest and dignified as your persona requires.

The correct way to punctuate a sentence that states: Of course it is none of my business, but -- is to place a period after the word but. Don't use excessive force in supplying such a moron with a period. Cutting his throat is only a momentary pleasure and is bound to get you talked about.

In terms of morals there is no such thing as 'state.' Just men. Individuals. Each responsible for his own acts.

The commonest weakness of our race is our ability to rationalize our most selfish purposes.

If you wanted to teach a baby a lesson, would you cut its head off?

Correct morality can only be derived from what man is — not from what do-gooders and well-meaning aunt Nellies would like him to be.