Quotes About Ethics

And you have to understand this, that a prince, especially a new one, cannot observe all those things for which men are esteemed, being often forced, in order to maintain the state, to act contrary to faith, friendship, humanity, and religion. " The Prince, XVIII, 5

An unavoidable war is called justice. When brutality is the only option left it is holy

And there's no getting around the fact that all life lives at the expense of another life.

The road to hell is paved with good intentions

Our country in general assumes that the pursuit of happiness really means the pursuit of pleasure and that therefore pleasure is the greatest good.

If you're going to care about the fall of the sparrow you can't pick and choose who's going to be the sparrow. It's everybody, and you're stuck with it.

Rules are made for people, not people for rules

we're all a grab bag of good and eveil, and by and large can't tell which is which

There always have been and there always will be people who have been corrupted into enjoying any excuse for cruelty.

your behaviour must be such that when you go to bed at night you will be happy with what you have done during the day

All that is required for the triumph of evil is that good men remain silent and do nothing.

What else is the electric chair or lethal injection than human sacrifice?

We do wrong, with all the best will in the world. And sometimes we do right without even knowing it.

I think this is one of the situations where there is no right choice. We have to pray that we make the choice that is the least wrong.

There will no longer be so many pleasant things to look at if responsible people do not do something about the unpleasant ones

respectability with overtones of

No, that can't be so.' 'Believe me, it is. All kinds of things you told them like sunsets are good and killing small birds is bad.' 'Oh please, may I have said something less banal. Please!

the fast models of mechanization have taken over how we think about scholarship and ourselves. Slowing down is a matter of ethical import. To drive oneself as if one were a machine should be recognized as a form of self-harm.

So far as I can tell, most worthwhile pleasures on this earth slip between gratifying another and gratifying oneself. Some would call that an ethics.

But I say unto you that whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart.

The new information technology, indifferent to human suffering, does not accommodate humane needs unless we harness it and make it do so.

But you are involved in the world, and your actions have consequences for other people, and if you don't recognize that, then that's the supreme kind of cruelty. Everyone shares someone else's fate to some extent.

The ethics of plagiarism have turned into the narcissism of small differences: because journalism cannot own up to its heavily derivative nature, it must enforce originality on the level of the sentence.

Imagine that you are a doctor and you suddenly learn that you'll see twenty patients on a Friday afternoon instead of twenty-five, while getting paid the same. Would you respond by spending more time with each patient? Or would you simply leave at six-thirty instead of seven-thirty and have dinner with your kids?