Quotes About Ethics

She was incurably dishonest.

Very well then, better a sane crook than a mad puritan.

We all must try to be good.

If we could only learn to look on evil as evil, whether it's clothed in filth or monotony or magnificence.

A man who was aware that there could be no honor and yet had honor, who knew the sophistry of courage and yet was brave.

Until the great mobs could be educated into a moral sense, someone must cry: Thou shalt not!

They damned the books I read and the things I thought by calling them immoral; later the fashion changed, and they damned things by calling them 'clever.

Of course I've got one--a man can't live without a moral code. Mine is that I'm against the burning of witches. Whenever they burn a witch I get all hot under the collar.

If one can't be a great artist or a great soldier, the next best thing is to be a great criminal.

You seem to be bankrupt - morally as well as financially

Do you believe in bobbed hair? asked G. Reece in the same undertone. I think it's unmoral, affirmed Bernice gravely. But, of course, you've either got to amuse people or feed'em or shock'em.

Some men escape the grip. Maybe their wives have no social ambitions; maybe they've hit a sentence or two in a 'dangerous book' that pleased them; maybe they started on the treadmill as I did and were knocked off. Anyway, they're the congressmen you can't bribe, the Presidents who aren't politicians, the writers, speakers, scientists, statesmen who aren't just populate grab-bags for a half-dozen women and children.

It's essentially cleaner to be corrupt and rich than it is to be innocent and poor.

The latter was considered a good fellow and a fine leader, until a year later, when he disappeared with a mess fund of eleven hundred dollars and, like so many leaders, proved exceedingly difficult to follow.

And of course all that he is is a gifted man without a moral sense.

Acho que todo mundo na América, exceto umas mil pessoas escolhidas, deveria ser obrigado a aceitar um código moral super-rígido: o catolicismo romano, por exemplo. Não me queixo da moralidade convencional. Pelo contrário, reclamo dos heréticos medíocres que roubam os frutos da sofisticação e adotam uma pose de liberalidade moral a que suas inteligências não fazem jus.

No, I'm thinking about myself - my black old inside self, the real one, with the fundamental honesty that keeps me from being absolutely wicked by making me realize my own sins.

Everyone suspects himself of at least one of the cardinal virtues, and this is mine: I am one of the few honest people that I have ever known.

Svatko o sebi misli da posjeduje barem jednu od osnovnih ljudskih vrlina, a ovo je moja: ubrajam se me?u malo poštenih ljudi koje sam upoznao u životu.

If one can't be a great artist or a great soldier, the next best thing is to be a great criminal.

Chacun se flatte de posséder en propre l'une au moins des vertus cardinales. Voici la mienne: je suis l'un des très rares hommes foncièrement honnêtes que je connaisse.

A sense of the fundamental decencies is parcelled out unequally at birth. ... Conduct may be founded on the hard rock or the wet marshes

Cada persona sospecha que cuenta por lo menos con una de las virtudes cardinales, y ésta es la mía: soy una de las pocas personas honestas que he conocido.

La deshonestidad femenina es algo que no se puede criticar en serio