Quotes About Ethics

When the great theologian and philosopher Rabbi Hillel was challenged to explain the Torah in the time he could stand on one foot, he replied, "Do not do unto others that which is repugnant to you. All else is commentary.

We are all genetic chimeras, at once saints and sinners, champions of the truth and hypocrites – not because humanity has failed to reach some foreordained religious or ideological ideal, but because of the way our species originated across millions of years of biological evolution.

Perhaps the time has come for ethics to be removed temporarily from the hands of the philosophers and biologicized - made part of the new synthesis.

Ethical philosophers intuit the deontological canons of morality by consulting the emotive centers of their own hypothalamic-limbic system... Only by interpreting the activity of the emotive centers as a biological adaptation can the meaning of the ethical canons be deciphered.

individual selection promoted sin, while group selection promoted virtue.

Science and technology are what we can do; morality is what we agree we should or should not do.

But he was a free and clear man, and the law said so. Augustus never hurt me, never said bad to me. What Harvey done was wrong. But tellin you don't put me on the nigger side. I'm still on the white man side, John. I'm still standin with the white. God help me if you believe somethin else about me.

Good night, and good luck.

The politician is ... trained in the art of inexactitude. His words tend to be blunt or rounded, because if they have a cutting edge they may later return to wound him.

No one can terrorize a whole nation, unless we are all his accomplices.

A satellite has no conscience.

This instrument can teach, it can illuminate; yes, and even it can inspire. But it can do so only to the extent that humans are determined to use it to those ends. Otherwise, it's nothing but wires and lights in a box.

Thinking that you are good can make you bad. Talking about positive behavior can encourage negative behavior. Laozi is clearly on to something when he warns us that consciously trying to be righteous will, in fact, turn us into insufferable hypocrites and that anyone striving to attain virtue is destined to fail.

People who are in wu-wei has de, typically translated as "virtue," "power," or "charismatic power." De is radiance that others can detect, and it serves as an outward signal that one is in wu-wei.

My central argument is that getting drunk, high, or otherwise cognitively

I don't want to live in a world where everything that I say, everything I do, everyone I talk to, every expression of creativity or love or friendship, is recorded.

Free societies do not restructure the rights, that the public is entitled to, for the convenience of spies and police.

The scientist is not responsible for the laws of nature. It is his job to find out how these laws operate. It is the scientist's job to find the ways in which these laws can serve the human will. However, it is not the scientist's job to determine whether a hydrogen bomb should be constructed, whether it should be used, or how it should be used. This responsibility rests with the American people and with their chosen representatives.

The minimum we should hope for with any display technology is that it should do no harm.

You cannot continue to victimize someone else just because you yourself were a victim once—there has to be a limit

The person of God walks the edge; one side virtue, the other, vice.

Virtue is God over the world. Vice is the world over God

No, no guns, they won't get us anywhere. I tried that when I was young and it's a useless interim game. Use guns and you're no better than the Black and Tans and that's not good enough.

In every part of the world, where corruption, bribery, delusion and injustice are practiced, those who practice it are guilty, Noah, but so are the `innocents.