Quotes About Ethics

The desire to annoy no one, to harm no one, can equally well be the sign of a just as of an anxious disposition.

It is better to do one's own duty, however defective it may be, than to follow the duty of another, however well one may perform it. He who does his duty as his own nature reveals it, never sins.

Well, the first and only time I went hunting, I shot a deer, and it mortified me. I just couldn't do it again. But I know a lot about guns, so I go to the gun range and stuff like that with friends sometimes.

I came to the conclusion that it was unlikely that a man as really awful as I think that Steve Jobs was could possibly create a great company for the long term. I just don't believe bad guys do well in the long run.

I'm not saying that all politicians are awful. I don't know any of them well enough to say whether they're awful or not. But almost every day, you find out something about them that's appalling. Maybe we shouldn't be surprised any longer.

A people and their religion must be judged by social standards based on social ethics. No other standard would have any meaning if religion is held to be necessary good for the well-being of the people.

Even if the most ethical people were elected to high position and we ran out of resources, there would still be lying, cheating, stealing, and corruption. It is not ethical people that are needed but rather a way of intelligently managing the Earth's resources for everyone's well-being.

Libertarianism is a way of measuring how the government and other kinds of systems respect the individual. At the core of libertarianism is the idea that the individual is sacrosanct and that anything that's done contrary to the well-being of the individual needs some pretty serious justification.

People who work in financial services don't have one shred of concern about the well-being of the people they serve. They're only interested in themselves.

Morality must relate, at some level, to the well-being of conscious creatures. If there are more and less effective ways for us to seek happiness and to avoid misery in this world - and there clearly are - then there are right and wrong answers to questions of morality.

We can't stop talking about the importance of our values and our culture. We can't stop talking about them because the moral well-being of our people is directly linked to their economic well-being.

If corporations are to remain a legitimate instrument of collective action, they must concern themselves directly with the well-being of those party to, and affected by, their actions.

Dogs and their well-being is one of my biggest passions in life. The Michael Vick case brought the issue of dogfighting to light... he knew what he was doing and never deserved to play in the NFL again.

One of the things that strikes me when I've read about these families - whether it be the Maxwells or the Redstones or the Julio-Claudians - is that, when you get that combination of money, power, and family relations, things get so complicated that you can justify actions to yourself that are pretty unhealthy to your well-being as a human being.

I learned one thing in Watergate: I was well-intentioned but rationalized illegal behavior. You cannot live your life other than walking in the truth. Your means are as important as your ends.

The logical quandaries thrown up by well-meaning systems are clearly something that I find darkly amusing.

Every leader has the responsibility to hone his or her integrity. Many times, there are integrity traps that have a tendency to catch well-meaning leaders off guard.

School boards are, for the most part,made up of political wannabes who see a board seat as a stepping stone for political office, or well-meaning parents who represent an ethnic group or geography, or have some other narrow interests. Few people on them understand what governance is about.

Smart, well-meaning people get it wrong when they start believing that the world owes them something and that the rules are different for them.

We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity. We weren't punctilious about locating and punishing only Hitler and his top officers. We carpet-bombed German cities; we killed civilians. That's war. And this is war.

Of the billionaires I have known, money just brings out the basic traits in them. If they were jerks before they had money, they are simply jerks with a billion dollars.

I'm not afraid of werewolves or vampires or haunted hotels, I'm afraid of what real human beings to do other real human beings.

I like Rick Ross as a person. I like Jay-Z and Kanye West as people. But I hate the companies that they record for.

It's all very well for us to sit here in the West with our high incomes and cushy lives, and say it's immoral to violate the sovereignty of another state. But if the effect of that is to bring people in that country economic and political freedom, to raise their standard of living, to increase their life expectancy, then don't rule it out.