Quotes About Ethics

It is the difference: we generalize do not. Specific bad humans did specific bad things; those humans do we not like. But the rest of humanity we judge one by one.

Aristotle, around 350 BCE, raised the possibility of machines replacing humans: For if every instrument could accomplish its own work, obeying or anticipating the will of others, like the statues of Daedalus, or the tripods of Hephaestus, which, says the poet, "of their own accord entered the assembly of the Gods"; if, in like manner, the shuttle would weave and the plectrum touch the lyre without a hand to guide them, chief workmen would not want servants, nor masters slaves.

The manager comes to see all relationships with others by a strict utilitarian calculus and, insofar as he dares, breaks friendships and alliances accordingly.

I accept all of the responsibility, but none of the blame. - Nixon

Something I've never been able to adapt to, to understand, is how they can lavish such love and care on the animals and then see them sold for slaughter.

Something I've never been able to adapt to, to understand is how they can lavish such love and care on the animals and then see them sold for slaughter. I don't dare say anything about it, though. Richard and his friends would be down on me in a flash. But there's some kind of cold, unfeeling contradiction in that business.

had come to accept that the court was an important forum where society, through battle, finds out and defines what it stands for.

this is the way of the Communists - using good words to do bad things

In a society that rejects absolute truth, the only vice that cannot be tolerated is the sin of intolerance.

Those four effects described above—shaping a male-dominant view of sexuality, initiating victims, contributing to difficulty in separating sexual fantasy and reality, and providing a training manual for abusers—are at work just as much with men who have not engaged in activities that meet the legal definition of rape. Here we have to let go of a comforting illusion—that there is some clear line between men who rape and men who don't, between the bad guys and the good guys.

But men often mistake killing and revenge for justice. They seldom have the stomach for justice.

Faith is the choice of the nobler hypothesis.' Not the noblest, one never knows what that is. But the nobler, the best one can see when the choice is made.

Trustees have the obligation to oversee the use of power in order to check its corrupting influence on those to whom it is entrusted, and to assure that those affected by its use are positively helped and are not harmed.

Trustees are accountable to all parties at interest for the best possible performance of the institution in the service of the needs of all constituencies—including society at large.

For to tempt and to be tempted are things very nearly allied.

Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And when you look into an abyss, the abyss also looks into you.

In actuality, the sociopath is not without a morality; he is simply without the one we want.

A cardinal American virtue, 'ambition,' promotes a cardinal American vice, 'deviant behavior.

Protecting the weak is the whole fucking basis for civilization. If you're not protecting the weak, you're not civilized. You're fucking animals.

W]e do not always practice what we preach (which, of course, suggests that something is wrong with what we preach).

Modern man has yielded to the harsh, the crude, the vulgar, the profane, the immoral.

While he values ethics he understands that apart from God moral principles are simply changing conventions and today's vices can become tomorrow's virtues.

virtue-signalling is all about boasting,' reported Phillips. 'It flaunts the signaller's credentials as a morally virtuous person. It screams, "Me! Me! Me!

I do not think that there is a reputable scientist on this planet who would advocate using this technology to generate a human child as was just announced.