Quotes About Ethics

To a man whose mind is free there is something even more intolerable in the sufferings of animals than in the sufferings of man. For with the latter it is at least admitted that suffering is evil and that the man who causes it is a criminal. But thousands of animals are uselessly butchered every day without a shadow of remorse. If any man were to refer to it, he would be thought ridiculous. And that is the unpardonable crime.

An ass is but an ass, though laden with gold.

Religion rarely fights for the equality of all in material life.

The Mahabharata can be viewed as a civilizational text not because it reflects the propagation of a particular view of these dharmas but because, among other things, it speaks to the debate on social ethics, especially between the brahmanical perspective and those that question it—a debate that has continued over many centuries.

The noticeable decline in liberal values is disturbing, especially as fewer and fewer persons appear concerned about this decline.

Are you such a coward that you would use a woman's babies against her?

A man of principles," Jesse said. "People say that about themselves when really they only want to make you unhappy.

Freedom is for honest people. No man who is not himself honest can be free – he is his own trap.

I believe that we as the leader of the Free World must provide important leadership on the ethical parameters, the ethical constraints that this research requires.

The most important element of a free society, where individual rights are held in the highest esteem, is the rejection of the initiation of violence.

Government should never be able to do anything you can't do. If you can't steal from your neighbor, you can't send the government to steal for you.

The woman was probably six months along in her pregnancy, and the child she was carrying weighed over two pounds. At that time doctors were not especially sophisticated, for lack of a better term, when it came to killing the baby prior to delivery, so they went ahead with delivery and put the baby in a bucket in the corner of the room. The baby tried to breathe, and tried to cry, and everyone in the room pretended the baby wasn't there.

Contemporary society urgently needs to recover a deep respect for the full sanctity of human life, but our neighbors will hear our words much more clearly if we live out a completely pro-life vision in every area of life.

For the first three centuries, every Christian writer who discussed killing said that all killing was prohibited--whether in war, capital punishment, or abortion. Whether or not the early church was correct in thinking that is what Jesus intended, it is perfectly clear that in the one case where Jesus was explicitly called upon to affirm the Old Testament's call for capital punishment, he refused.

I believe that all people should be free to believe and worship as they please. I also believe that people should be free to act in ways that I consider ethically wrong. But there is at least one important restriction on this freedom that every just society must maintain. My religious and ethical freedom does not include the right to kill other people.

The Ford Motor Company did not offer financing to its buyers until the 1920s. Its founder believed that it was morally irresponsible to sell cars on credit to people whose dreams did not meet their budgets.

These were lobbyists—many of them compensated quite handsomely not to react as human beings.

Moral action – humble and honest – is the tribute that power must at some point pay to reason.

That's not the part that gnaws at Rolf. It's the last part, where Ezekiel says that "if the watchman sees the sword coming and does not blow the trumpet to warn the people and the sword comes and takes the life of one of them...I will hold the watchman accountable for his blood.

Public servants in this Europe often do their best when they stop caring about whether they'll be fired.

Religions find lasting utility in terms of prescription or parameter, rules for the conduct of human affairs.

Police departments no longer have to pay overtime or divert resources from other projects to find out where an individual goes - all they have to do is place a tracking device on someone's car or ask a cell phone company for that individual's location history and the technology does the work for them.

It was funny, she thought, that before she had ever had a job she had always thought of an office as a place where people came to work, but now it seemed as if it was a place where they also brought their private lives for everyone else to look at, paw over, comment on and enjoy

This is a good principle for us. If even the highest officials in the world approve of our actions and God does not, we should be concerned. But if God approves, even though others don't, we should be content.