Quotes About Ethics

If I always behave with propriety, no matter what it costs me to suppress my own desires, then that is the measure of me. Such is the essence of self-control.

To claim absolute knowledge is to become monstrous. Knowledge is an unending adventure at the edge of uncertainty.

Arrakis makes us moral and ethical.

the drowning man who climbs on your shoulders to save himself is understandable—except when you see it happen in the drawing room.

When I am weaker than you, I ask you for freedom because that is according to your principles; when I am stronger than you, I take away your freedom because that is according to my principles.

Once men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free. But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them." " 'Thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a man's mind

Moral decisions are always easy to recognize," Odrade said. "They are where you abandon self-interest.

Law always chooses sides on the basis of enforcement power. Morality and legal niceties have little to do with it when the real question is: Who has the clout?   —Bene

Warfare leaves a residue of 'eat drink and be merry' that often leads inexorably to moral breakdown.

The historical system of mutual pillage and extortion stops here on Arrakis," his father said. "You cannot go on forever stealing what you need without regard to those who come after. The physical qualities of a planet are written into its economic and political record.

I see the day coming when ceremony must take the place of faith and symbolism replaces morality.

Communal/managed economics have always been more destructive of their societies than those driven by greed

There's no such thing as equal justice anywhere. It's unsettling to a society when you try to achieve such a false balance.

Atrocity has no excuses, no mitigating argument. Atrocity never balances or rectifies the past. Atrocity merely arms the future for more atrocity. It is self-perpetuating upon itself—a barbarous form of incest. Whoever commits atrocity also commits those future atrocities thus bred.

Holiness has replaced love in your religion!

You took the universe as you found it and applied your principles where you could.

Gurney's a romantic," the Duke growled. This talk of killing suddenly disturbed him, coming from his son. "I'd sooner you never had to kill…but if the need arises, you do it however you can—tip or edge." He looked up at the skylight, on which the rain was drumming.

Thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a man's mind,'" Paul quoted. "Right out of the Butlerian Jihad and the Orange Catholic Bible," she said. "But what the O.C. Bible should've said is: 'Thou shalt not make a machine to counterfeit a human mind.' Have you studied the Mentat in your service?

My father once told me that respect for truth comes close to being the basis for all morality.

That which makes a man superhuman is terrifying.

When your actions describe a system of evil consequences, you should be judged by those consequences and not by your explanations.

When I am weaker than you, I ask you for freedom because that is according to your principles; when I am stronger than you, I take away your freedom because that is according to my principles. —WORDS OF AN ANCIENT PHILOSOPHER

I choose to ally myself against any force which brings humiliation upon humankind.

There is a fundamental tension between science and freedom - no matter how science is viewed by its practitioners nor how freedom is sensed by those who believe they have it.