Quotes About Ethics

A whore should be judged by the same criteria as other professionals offering services for pay — such as dentists, lawyers, hairdressers, physicians, plumbers, etc. Is she professionally competent? Does she give good measure? Is she honest with her clients? It is possible that the percentage of honest and competent whores is higher than that of plumbers and much higher than that of lawyers. And enormously higher than that of professors.

I am free because I know that I alone am morally responsible.

But if you really believe that your neighbors must have laws for their own good, why shouldn't you pay for it?

I really didn't mean to steal it. Mr. Williams shook his head. He scratched at his chin nervously. Why not? That's what they're there for. Tunes belong to everybody. So do stories.

Vegetarianism is harmless enough, though it is apt to fill a man with wind and self-righteousness.

Law, lastly, stands between politics and morality.

If you are a boss, ask yourself: When you look back at how you've treated followers, peers, and superiors, in their eyes, will you have earned the right to be proud of yourself? Or will they believe that you ought to be ashamed of yourself and embarrassed by how you have trampled on others' dignity day after day?

the difference between how a person treats the powerless versus the powerful is as good a measure of human character as I know.

As much as I believe in tolerance and fairness, I have never lost a wink of sleep about being unapologetically intolerant of anyone who refuses to show respect for those around them.

At the places where I want to work, even if people do other things well (even extraordinary well) but routinely demean others, they are seen as incompetent.

Third, and finally, if you want people to believe the system is fair and effective, it's essential to be tough on the most powerful, profitable, and well-known jerks. If you enforce the rule only with the weak performers, people who are easily replaceable, or who deliver bad news and have the gumption to disagree with superiors—and you allow powerful assholes to run roughshod over anyone they please—people will smell your hypocritical bullshit from a mile away.

The Law of the Twelve Tables, a Roman legislation circa 450 BC, actually required a father to put to death any deformed child (Cito necatus insignis ad deformitatem puer esto). (Modern moral philosophers, like Joseph Fletcher and Princeton University's Peter Singer, advocate the same thing.)

Were they among war's greatest heroes — or history's greatest mass murderers?

Psychologically, nothing is darker or more menacing, or harder to accept, than the participation of physicians in mass murder. However technicized or commercial the modern physician may have become, he or she is still supposed to be a healer — and one responsible to a tradition of healing, which all cultures revere and depend upon.

How long had he been doing what was necessary instead of what was right? In a fair world they would be one and the same.

Kill a man who needs killing, and sometimes others pay for it. The question is, was it worth doing it anyway? There's always a balance, you know. Good and evil. Light and Shadow. We would not be human if there wasn't a balance.

Bound by the Oath against lying, Aes Sedai [carry] the half-truth, the quarter-truth and the implication to arts.

The innocent died along with the guilty. And if you did nothing, then only the innocent died.

Respect is a thing earned and not demanded, Perrin Aybara.

An honorable man protects whoever needs protecting, but children above all, and women above men.

That was the trouble with the best of men. They always thought they were doing the right thing.

Is it betrayal to betray a traitor?

As far as he was concerned, a man who decided to rob and kill deserved what he got when he lost the game. He did not dwell on them, but neither did he jerk his eyes away if they fell on one of the robbers.

If we do violence to oppose evil, soon we would be no different from what we struggle against. It is with the strength of our belief that we fight the Shadow.