Quotes About Ethics

It is impossible for me to see' why any belief in the supernatural is necessary to have a keen perception of right and wrong.

Subjects who are governed by the threats and promises of a king are merely slaves. They are not governed by the ideal, by noble views of right and wrong. They are obedient cowards, controlled by fear, or beggars governed by rewards—by alms.

For my part, I am willing to give up heaven to get rid of hell. I had rather there should be no heaven than that any solitary soul should be condemned to suffer for ever and ever.

man has the right to stop the pulse of pain and woo the sleep that has no dream.

I believe that all actions that tend to the well-being of sentient beings are virtuous and moral.

What is morality? It is the best thing to do under the circumstances. What is the best thing to do under the circumstances? That which will increase the sum of human happiness—or lessen it the least. Happiness in its highest, noblest form, is the only good; that which increases or preserves or creates happiness is moral—that which decreases it, or puts it in peril, is immoral.

You're like everyone else, Strike; you want your civil liberties when you've told the missus you're at the office and you're at a lap-dancing club, but you want twenty-four-hour surveillance on your house when someone's trying to force your bathroom window open. Can't have it both ways.

Lucy's idea of sympathy compared unfavorably with some of the interrogation techniques they had used at Guantanamo.

But as I'm not going around killing people I don't like, I don't think there's much wrong with admitting some people contribute more to the world than others.' 'So you don't subscribe to "any man's death diminishes me"?' said Robin. 'I wouldn't feel remotely diminished by the deaths of some of the bastards I've met.

Why do people do this?' 'Blog, you mean? I don't know ... didn't someone once say the unexamined life isn't worth living?' 'Yeah, Plato,' said Strike, 'but this isn't examining a life, it's exhibiting it.

a man with as dirty a record as his!… This is the sort of man that poses as a leader of the people! And successfully, too! Henrik Ibsen, Rosmersholm

Friends of friends had offered everything from management roles in the close protection industry to business partnerships, but the itch to detect, solve, and reimpose order on the moral universe could not be extinguished in him. He doubted it ever would be.

But he knew no other way; it was part of a short but inflexible personal code of ethics that he had carried with him all his adult life: do the job and do it well.

Aun así, él no sabía hacer las cosas de otra manera; eso formaba parte de un código ético personal, breve pero inflexible, que lo había acompañado a lo largo de toda su vida adulta y que podía resumirse en una frase: «Haz el trabajo y hazlo bien.»

What makes people do things like that?" Robin asked, in genuine perplexity. "They're shits," said Strike.

you want your civil liberties when you've told the missus you're at the office and you're at a lap-dancing club, but you want twenty-four-hour surveillance on your house when someone's trying to force your bathroom window open. Can't have it both ways.

silkworm?" "Yeah, and you know what? I always thought they were like spiders spinning their webs, but you know how they get silk from the worms?" "Can't say I do." "They boil them," said Robin. "Boil them alive, so that they don't damage their cocoons by bursting out of them. It's the cocoons that are made of silk. Not very nice, really, is it?

widening gap between knowledge and the moral maturity of mankind. And he foresaw disaster if the gap was not narrowed.

In all ages, hypocrites, called priests, have put crowns upon the heads of thieves, called kings.

Religion has not civilized man, man has civilized religion.

If a man would follow, today, the teachings of the Old Testament, he would be a criminal. If he would follow strictly the teachings of the New, he would be insane.

So, ministers say that they teach charity. This is natural. They live on alms. All beggars teach that others should give.

Courage without conscience is a wild beast.

Here lies the characteristic paradox of good and evil: for action, in terms of practical effects, is superior to inaction, and the congenitally active evil an can frequently win advantage over the sometimes inactive good. Indeed, the fundamentally stable and restful spirit of goodness is a lure to evil inspirations, an encouragement to villains who are aware that, in the moral and political chess game, they have the white pieces and the first move.