Quotes About Ethics

Ethics as formation, then, is the venture of speaking about the form of Christ taking form in our world neither abstractly nor casuistically, neither programmatically nor purely reflectively.

Not enslaved to principles but bound by love for God, they have become free from the problems and conflicts of ethical decision. They are no longer weighed down by them. They belong completely and solely to God and God's will.

The proper relation of the Church to the world cannot be deduced from natural law or rational law or from universal human rights, but only from the gospel of Jesus Christ.

The word of the justifying grace of God never departs from its position as the final word; it never yields itself simply as a result that has been achieved. . . . The word remains irreversibly the last; for otherwise it would be reduced to the quality of what is calculable, a merchandise, and would thereby be robbed of its divine character. Grace would be venal and cheap. It would not be a gift.1 Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Ethics

For Jesus what is at stake is not the exhibition and realization of new ethical ideals, and not some kind of goodness of his own, but solely God's love for human beings. Therefore, he can enter into their guilt; he can let himself be burdened with their guilt.

When a man gets angry with his brother and swears at him, when he publicly insults or slanders him, he is guilty of murder and forfeits his relation to God. He erects a barrier not only between himself and his brother, but also between himself and God.

The only thing I am really clear about in the whole problem is that a 'culture' that breaks down in the face of danger is no culture.

It was Bonhoeffer and his friends who proved by their resistance unto death that even in the age of the nation-state there are loyalties which transcend those to state and nation.

The issue can no longer be evaded. It is becoming clearer every day that the most urgent problem besetting our Church is this: How can we live the Christian life in the modern world?

He opposed the militaristic nationalism of the new Germany, rooted in "blood and soil," even as the German Evangelical Church and most of its leaders succumbed to the new ideology. By the early period of the war, the embrace of Nazi ideology at all levels of society had led to the complete corruption of social and personal ethical behavior among most Germans.

The fact that he was ashamed when he was discovered praying was for Kant an argument against prayer. He failed to see that prayer by its very nature is a matter for the strictest privacy, and he failed to perceive the fundamental significance of shame for human existence.

responsible man to ask is not how he is to extricate himself heroically from the affair, but how the coming generation is to live.

The ultimate test of a moral society is the kind of world that it leaves to its children.

Better to be a beggar in freedom than to be forced into compromises against my conscience. —

On the other hand, every virtue and every good deed turns worthless if pride creeps into it - which happens whenever in some fashion we glory in our goodness.

Dietrich von Hildebrand

Someone who has managed to build up a great fortune may look back at his achievements with some satisfaction, reflecting proudly, "I am a rich man." But he would do well to reflect, too, on the extent to which those riches are based on lies, deceit, and the overriding of others' interests—negative actions that in the long run will only engender suffering.

Accountability only works if you want it to.

There is a legitimate argument over whether the death penalty effectively deters violent crime, although my personal observation is that not one of the criminals who have been executed over the years has ever killed again.

Compulsion cannot produce virtue; it can only produce the outward semblance of virtue.

Those who have virtue always in their mouths, and neglect it in practice, are like a harp, which emits a sound pleasing to others, while itself is insensible of the music.

Blushing is the color of virtue.

There is a written and an unwritten law. The one by which we regulate our constitutions in our cities is the written law; that which arises from custom is the unwritten law.

One ought to seek out virtue for its own sake, without being influenced by fear or hope, or by any external influence. Moreover, that in that does happiness consist.