Quotes About Ethics

There are three classes of men; lovers of wisdom, lovers of honor, and lovers of gain.

When men speak ill of thee, live so as nobody may believe them.

For he who steals a little steals with the same wish as he who steals much, but with less power, and he who takes up a greater amount; not having deposited it, is wholly unjust.

Let honor be to us as strong an obligation as necessity is to others.

True glory consists in doing what deserves to be written, in writing what deserves to be read, and in so living as to make the world happier and better for our living in it.

Peccant, qvia nihil peccant.

Bad men rule by the feebleness of the ruled; and this is just; the triumph of weaklings would not be just.

The giving of riches and honors to a wicked man is like giving strong wine to him that hath a fever.

The omission of good is no less reprehensible than the commission of evil.

It were better to have no opinion of God at all than such a one as is unworthy of him for the one is only belief - the other contempt.

The very spring and root of honesty and virtue lie in good education.

The man who is completely wise and virtuous has no need of glory, except so far as it disposes and eases his way to action by the greater trust that it procures him.

Vultures are the most righteous of birds: they do not attack even the smallest living creature.

A few vices are sufficient to darken many virtues.

The fact is that men who know nothing of decency in their own lives are only too ready to launch foul slanders against their betters and to offer them up as victims to the evil deity of popular envy.

The truly pious must negotiate a difficult course between the precipice of godlessness and the marsh of superstition.

Demaratus, being asked in a troublesome manner by an importunate fellow, Who was the best man in Lacedaemon? answered at last, 'He, Sir, that is the least like you'.

Thus ambitious spirits in a commonwealth, when they transgress their bounds, are apt to do more harm than good.

They should live all together on an equal footing; merit to be their only road to eminence, and the disgrace of evil, and credit of worthy acts, their one measure of difference between man and man.

It was glorious to acquire a throne by justice, yet more glorious to prefer justice before a throne; the same virtue which made the one appear worthy of regal power exalted the other to the disregard of it.

For first, when Pompey made severe laws for punishing and laying great fines on those who had corrupted the people with gifts, Cato advised him to let alone what was already passed, and to provide for the future; for if he should look up past misdemeanors, it would be difficult to know where to stop; and if he would ordain new penalties, it would be unreasonable to punish men by a law, which at that time they had not the opportunity of breaking.

The man who is completely wise and virtuous has no need of glory, except so far as it…eases his way to action by the greater trust that it procures him.

It is the hither accomplishment to use money well than to use arms; but not to need it is more noble than to use it.

As Plato says: 'People cannot be good leaders, unless they have first been good servants.