Quotes About Ethics

Wladislaw Dering

Mirror, Standard, Telegraph, Birmingham Post, Sketch, all careful to report accurately the events without editorial comment. Unlike some countries, the British press must be exceedingly careful not to try a man in the newspapers and magazines before he comes to court. In such cases when a newspaper becomes an accuser or prejudger, turning public sentiment, the paper can be named as a defendant to the action. It keeps journalism honest.

Era corriente que los cráneos bien formados fueran recuperados y vendidos a los guardias alemanes, que los utilizaban como pisapapeles.

Egoists hold that a man's primary moral obligation is to achieve his own welfare (egoists do not necessarily agree on the nature of man's welfare).

The Nazi] death camps," notes a writer in The New York Times, "were conceived, built and often administered by Ph.D.'s."10 What had those Ph.D.'s been taught to think in their schools and universities—and where did such ideas come from?

The Nazi] death camps," notes a writer in The New York Times, "were conceived, built and often administered by Ph.D.'s.

Hegel would not have been possible but for Kant, who would not have been possible but for Plato. These three, more than any others, are the intellectual builders of Auschwitz.

The standard by which ideas are to be judged, Hitler says repeatedly, is not "abstract" considerations of logic or fidelity to fact. The standard is: usefulness to the Volk.

There is no such thing as truth," explains Hitler, "either in the moral or in the scientific sense." Or as Goebbels puts the point: "Important is not what is right but what wins.

Advocates of self-sacrifice hold that a man's primary obligation is to serve some entity outside of himself.

Christianity prepared the ground. It paved the way for modern totalitarianism by entrenching three fundamentals in the Western mind: in metaphysics, the worship of the supernatural; in epistemology, the reliance on faith; as a consequence, in ethics, the reverence for self-sacrifice.

In an advanced, civilized country, a handful of men were able to gain for their criminal schemes the enthusiastic backing of millions of decent, educated, law-abiding citizens. What is the factor that made this possible?

Philosophy is the study of the nature of existence, of knowledge, and of values.

The branch of philosophy that studies values is ethics (or morality), which rests on both the above branches—on a view of the world in which man acts, and of man's nature, including his means of knowledge.

The branch of philosophy that applies ethics to social questions is politics, which studies the nature of social systems and the proper functions of government.

Aristotle is the champion of this world, the champion of nature, as against the supematuralism of Plato.

The motor behind Hitler was not men's immorality or amorality; it was the Germans' obedience to morality—as defined by their nation's leading moral philosopher.

Moral laws, according to Kant, are a set of orders issued to man by a nonheavenly, nonearthly entity (which I shall discuss shortly), a set of unconditional commandments or "categorical imperatives"—to be sharply contrasted with mere "counsels of prudence.

An interest," writes Kant, "is present only in a dependent will which is not of itself always in accord with reason; in the divine will we cannot conceive of an interest.

Plato appeals to soaring idealism scornful of the practical. Aristotle appeals to joyful realism on earth. Kant appeals to rage.

The time will come when men such as I will look upon the murder of animals as they now look on the murder of men.

Our life is made by the death of others.

My body will not be a tomb for other creatures.

He who does not oppose evil......commands it to be done.