Quotes About Ethics

It's just not fair. And things need to be fair. Judges make things fair, and so will I.

There is often a "cadre" of bad friends around a person encouraging them to do things that are morally wrong, unjustified, and unethical

I suspect that the day a person gives up on the Geneva Convention is the day a person gives up on the human race.

it may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces.

I have watched enough science fiction films to accept that humanity's unchecked pursuit of learning will end with robots taking over the world.

Unleashing a killing spree on Quaker property is a bit of a faux pas

It simply had never occurred to Annie during all her years of child-rearing that terrible things would not happen to her children just because she would not do terrible things to anyone else's.

The thing about a country famous for its bribery is that the people who don't take bribes are very keen you know that about them.

I am neither virgin nor priest enough to play with the inner life.

One could only damage oneself through the harm one did to others. One could never get directly at oneself.

Whatever lessens suffering in yourself and others, that is right. Whatever increases suffering, that is wrong. The answer is within you. When you are free of pride and prejudice, when you are calm and attentive, a light will shine within you. Through meditation and through being mindful you will find your own knowledge of rightness. You will be your own light.

Whatever lessens suffering in yourself and others, that is right. Whatever increases suffering, that is wrong.

It is a world not of angels but of angles, where men speak of moral principles but act on power principles; a world where we are always moral and our enemies always immoral;

People always do the right thing for the wrong reason.

I am willing without further exercise in pain to open my heart. And this needs no doctrine or theology of suffering. We love apocalypses too much, and crisis ethics and florid extremism with its thrilling language. Excuse me, no. I've had all the monstrosity I want.

Unfortunately for the betterment of mankind it is not always the fair-minded who are in the right.

between human beings there are only two alternatives, either brotherhood or crime.

And what about all the good I have in my heart—doesn't it mean anything?

How we all love extreme cases and apocalypses, fires, drownings, stranglings, and the rest of it. The bigger our mild, basically ethical, safe middle classes grow the more radical excitement is in demand. Mild or moderate truthfulness or accuracy seems to have no pull at all.

Your authority and my degeneracy are one in the same.

A professor from UBC observed that he agreed with Alexander Pope about the ultimate unreality of evil. Seen from the highest point of metaphysics. To a rational mind, nothing bad ever really happens. He was talking high-minded balls. Twaddle! I thought. I said, 'Oh? Do you mean that every gas chamber has a silver lining?

The lesson of an American life like my father's... is that achievements are compatible with decency (112).

So many questions impossible to answer could not be asked about an honest man. Nor perhaps about a sane man.

Even if I am not the honestest type in the world I don't want to lie more than is average.