Quotes About Ethics

Coveting power for power's sake was a "base" pursuit

memorandum to the State Department dated October 26, 1933. Seriously ill patients could ask to be euthanized, but if unable to make the request, their families could do so for them.

It is," she wrote, "an unfortunate trait in the human character to assail or asperse others engaged in the performance of humanitarian acts.

These were men, wrote Lincoln Steffens, "who will not have an office unless it is up where the air is cool and fresh, the outlook broad and beautiful, and where there is silence in the heart of business.

Yet gun dealers sell guns in America the way Rite Aid sells toothpaste, denying at every step of the way the true nature of the products they sell and absolving themselves of any and all responsibility for their role in the resulting mayhem.

he never tired and was always patient and polite. These were his strengths. His weakness was his belief that evil had boundaries.

strict economy in the use of natural resources has not been practiced, but it must be henceforth unless we are immoral enough to impair conditions in which our children are to live."25

I have examined the laws of the United States carefully and I do not find any law which says that a white man shall be punished for killing a Chinaman.

Up to our time," he said, "strict economy in the use of natural resources has not been practiced, but it must be henceforth unless we are immoral enough to impair conditions in

His weakness was his belief that evil had boundaries

Evil prevails when good people do nothing.

If you ask me, this younger generation is altogether too careless about their morals.

There are no ethics when you're dealing with the police. Or I should say when the police are dealing with you. You're supposed to be bound by ethics. The police don't have ethics. They act on the assumption that they're 'getting the truth,' whereas you are 'protecting a criminal

Today we are living the grotesque spectacle of the poisoning of the earth by the nineteenth-century hero system of unrestrained material production. This is perhaps the greatest and most pervasive evil to have emerged in all of history, and it may even eventually defeat all of mankind. Still there are no twisted people whom we can hold responsible for this.

In this view, man is an energy-converting organism who must exert his manipulative powers, who must damage his world in some ways, who must make it uncomfortable for others, etc., by his own nature as an active being. He seeks self-expansion from a very uncertain power base. Even if man hurts others, it is because he is weak and afraid, not because he is confident and cruel. Rousseau summed up this point of view with the idea that only the strong person can be ethical, not the weak one.

Our heroic projects that are aimed at destroying evil have the paradoxical effect of bringing more evil into the world.

So far, about morals, I know only that what is moral is what you feel good after and what is immoral is what you feel bad after.

Most people were heartless about turtles because a turtle's heart will beat for hours after it has been cut up and butchered. But the old man thought, I have such a heart too.

Everyone behaves badly--given the chance.

You did not kill the fish only to keep alive and to sell for food, he thought. You killed him for pride and because you are a fisherman. You loved him when he was alive and you loved him after. If you love him, it is not a sin to kill him. Or is it more?

Being against evil doesn't make you good. Tonight I was against it and then I was evil myself. I could feel it coming just like a tide... I just want to destroy them. But when you start taking pleasure in it you are awfully close to the thing you're fighting.

Do not think about sin, he thought. There are enough problems now without sin. Also I have no understanding of it.

You never kill anyone you want to kill in a war, he said to himself.

He did not care for the lying at first. He hated it. Then later he had come to like it. It was part of being an insider but it was a very corrupting business.