Quotes About Ethics

psychopaths are rational and aware of what they are doing and why. Their behavior is the result of choice, freely exercised.

What makes psychopaths different from all others is the remarkable ease with which they lie, the pervasiveness of their deception, and the callousness with which they carry it out.

Discovering the inapplicability of Judeo-Christian morality in certain circumstances involving affairs of state can be searing. The rare individuals who have recognized the necessity of violating such morality, acted accordingly, and taken responsibility for their actions are among the most necessary leaders for their countries, even as they have caused great unease .. - In Defense of Henry Kissinger, The Atlantic 2013 May http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/p...

Stoics belittle physical harm, but this is not braggadocio. They are speaking of it in comparison to the devastating agony of shame they fancied good men generating when they knew in their hearts that they had failed to do their duty

Simply put, there are actions of state that are the right things to do, even if they cannot be defined in terms of conventional morality.

Because moralists in these matters are always driven by righteous passion, whenever you disagree with them, you are by definition immoral and deserve no quarter; whereas realists, precisely because they are used to conflict, are less likely to overreact to it.

keep in mind always Isaiah Berlin's admonition from his celebrated lecture delivered in 1953, and published the following year under the title "Historical Inevitability," in which he condemns as immoral and cowardly the belief that vast impersonal forces such as geography, the environment, and ethnic characteristics determine our lives and the direction of world politics.

the "sum of virtue," Hobbes writes, "is to be sociable with them that will be sociable, and formidable to them that will not."1

Democracy and morality are simply not synonymous

Like all wise men, he thought tragically: for we create moral standards in order to measure our own inadequacies.

If there's evil in recklessness, there's also evil in banality.

Every time we turn our heads the other way when we see the law flouted, when we tolerate what we know to be wrong, when we close our eyes and ears to the corrupt because we are too busy or too frightened, when we fail to speak up and speak out, we strike a blow against freedom and decency and justice.

Murder is a sin. It's a sin in Judaism, it's a sin in Christianity, it's a sin in Islam and every other… - I'll decide what's a sin.

A death sentence was a death sentence, no matter how carefully it was worded.

A bank is a place where they lend you an umbrella in fair weather and ask for it back when it begins to rain.

Nothing can make injustice just but mercy.

You will continue to read stories of crookedness and corruption - of policemen who lie and steal, doctors who reap where they do not sew, politicians on the take. Don't be misled. They are news because they are the exceptions.

About winning and losing: It isn't important, what really counts is how you play the game. About playing the game: PLAY TO WIN!

Any man who tries to be good all the time is bound to come to ruin among the great number who are not good.

Renaissance diplomat and courtier Niccolò Machiavelli wrote, "Any man who tries to be good all the time is bound to come to ruin among the great number who are not good.

Do not swallow the easy moralism of the day, which urges honesty at the expense of desirability.

Power is essentially amoral and one of the most important skills to acquire is the ability to see circumstances rather than good or evil.

The straight trees are cut down, the crooked ones are left standing. Kautilya, Indian philosopher, third century B.C. KEYS

My special job is the most interesting I know of anywhere. More fun than being king, pope, or prime minister anywhere-for no one can turn me out of it and I don't have to make any compromises with principles, Morgan once said. His principles-Do your work; be honest; keep your word; help when you can; be fair-were the words he lived by.