Quotes About Ethics

Impossible for me to harm or, by omission of action, allow to be harmed a human being.

No, but your idea of what betters human life might differ from someone else's.' For

Remember that the prime consideration of science is the protection and betterment of human life. I would never contravene that.

What more valuable possession does a homeless man have than his honor?

I have always considered Pascal's Wager a questionable bet to place, since any God worth believing in would prefer an honest agnostic to a calculating hypocrite.

Michael, it's terrible to say so, but sometimes you have to weigh the cost of one man's life against the value of an entire operation.

it was disbelief in the universality of moral truth, and the failure to see that human beings are by nature capable of gaining access to moral truth, that created the intellectual perversions of pragmatism and positivism alike.

In a world of fixed future, there can be no right or wrong. Right an wrong demand freedom of choice, but if each action is already chosen, there can be no freedom of choice.

For me the big questions about life are: 1. How should I live in the world? 2. Why should I live this way?

You see, Doctor, God didn't kill that little girl. Fate didn't butcher her and destiny didn't feed her to those dogs. If God saw what any of us did that night he didn't seem to mind. From then on I knew... God doesn't make the world this way. We do.

I love you, but why must you love the law? 'Tis plain for all to see that she's a whore...that virtuous persons have no need to woo; that villains screw, then studiously ignore.

What does fighting crime mean, exactly? Does it mean upholding the law when a woman shoplifts to feed her children, or does it mean struggling to uncover the ones who, quite legally, have brought about her poverty?

The Rudderless World is not shaped by vague metaphysical Forces. It is not God who kills the Children. Not Fate that butchers them or Destiny that feeds them to the Dogs. ... It´s us. Only us.

Adrian Veidt: I did the right thing, didn't I? It all worked out in the end. Dr. Manhattan: 'In the end'? Nothing ends, Adrian. Nothing ever ends.

Our integrity sells for so little, but it is all we really have. It is the very last inch of us, but within that inch, we are free.

Who watches the watchmen?

Our integrity sells for so little, but it is all that we really have. It is the very last inch of us. But within that inch, we are free... An inch; it is small, and it is fragile, and it is the only thing in the world worth having. We must never lose it or give it away; we must never let them take it from us.

She finds herself suspicious of religious zeal that has a business plan.

We're saints and sinners both, the lot of us, or else there's no saints and no sinners.

It's not God that kills the children. Not fate that butchers them or destiny that feeds them to the dogs. It's us. Only us.

The accumulated filth of all their sex and murder will foam up about their waists and all the whores and politicians will look up and shout save us!... ...and I'll look down and whisper no.

What broke in a man when he could bring himself to kill another?

It is the duty of a judge to do justice, but it is only the people who can be just

The fierce old man struck the arm of his chair and said, I would shoot him like a dog. Then because no one spoke, he said to the captain, wouldn't you? And the captain said, No. —You wouldn't? —No. —But he has offended against the race. Then the captain said trembling, Meneer, as a policeman I know an offence against the law, and as a Christian I know an offence against God; but I do not know an offence against the race.