Quotes About Ethics

Let whoever is in charge keep this simple question in her head (not, how can I always do this right thing myself, but) how can I provide for this right thing to be always done?

Is the whole thing a folly and a mockery? Am I no better than a eunuch or is the proper man—the man with the right to existence—a raging stallion forever neighing after his neighbor's womankind? I don't know. And there is nothing to guide us. And if everything is so nebulous about a matter so elementary as the morals of sex, what is there to guide us in the more subtle morality of all other personal contacts, associations, and activities?

Fellows come in and tell the most extraordinarily gross stories—so gross that they will positively give you a pain. And yet they'd be offended if you suggested that they weren't the sort of person you could trust your wife alone with.

It is, in fact, asking for trouble if you are more altruist than the society that surrounds you

A world with England presenting the spectacles of moral cowardice will be a world on a lower plane…. If

It was business, and business may be presumed to cover quite a lot of bad taste.

Christ was a sort of an Englishman, and Englishmen did not, as a rule, refuse to do their jobs .

The Indian never fishes or hunts for sport, only for food. Granpa said it was the silliest damn thing in the world to go around killing something for sport. He said the whole thing, more than likely, was thought up by politicians between wars when they wasn't gittin' people killed so they could keep their hand in on killing. Granpa said that idjits taken it up without a lick of thinking at it, but if you could check it out—politicians started it. Which is likely. We

When law and morality contradict each other, the citizen has the cruel alternative of either losing his moral sense or losing his respect for the law.

Slavery, protection, and monopoly find defenders, not only in those who profit by them, but in those who suffer by them.

Legal plunder has two roots: One of them, as I have said before, is in human greed; the other is in false philanthropy.

The safest way to make laws respected is to make them respectable.

Science sans conscience n'est que ruine de l'âme.

Science without conscience is only ruin of the soul.

She says it has nothing to do with what you look like, or what you have. It has only to do with what you think of, and what you do.

Folks who make such a fuss about their rights turn them into wrongs sometimes. -- (from Behind the White Brick)

Naturally, Jessie giggled again. "She says it has nothing to do with what you look like, or what you have. It has only to do with what you think of, and what you do.

That's almost like telling lies," she said. "And lies—well, you see, they are not only wicked—they're vulgar.

Perhaps, she said, to be able to learn things quickly isn't everything. To be kind is worth a great deal to other people. If Miss Minchin knew everything on earth and was like what she is now, she'd still be a detestable thing, and everybody would hate her. Lots of clever people have done harm and have been wicked. Look at Robespierre—

You can't expect a person to love an animal they might see decapitated at any minute. It ain't realistic, I told Miss Blue, who was gulping down her worm. She looked up at me like it shocked her to learn that some chickens got treated that way.

When wicked or ignorant men govern, it is not surprising that virtue and goodness are not esteemed. For the former hate them, and the latter do not know them.

Guardate quanto gli uomini ingannano loro medesimi: ciascuno reputa brutti e peccati che lui non fa, leggieri quegli che fa; e con questa regola si misura spesso el male e el bene, più che col considerare e gradi e qualità delle cose.

Rarely do great beauty and great virtue dwell together.

Who would you rather live with, a bunch of bonobos feeling good? Or chimpanzees eating each other's babies? Or humans waterboarding each other and destroying the planet?