Quotes About Ethics

You [demagogues] are like the fishers for eels; in still waters they catch nothing, but if they thoroughly stir up the slime, their fishing is good; in the same way it's only in troublous times that you line your pockets.

Comedy too can sometimes discern what is right.

Politics, these days, is no occupation for an educated man, a man of character. Ignorance and total lousiness are better.

It is easy to fly into a passion - anybody can do that - but to be angry with the right person to the right extent and at the right time with the right object and in the right way - that is not easy, and it is not everyone who can do it

Men acquire a particular quality by constantly acting in a particular way.

Since the things we do determine the character of life, no blessed person can become unhappy. For he will never do those things which are hateful and petty.

When people are friends, they have no need of justice, but when they are just, they need friendship in addition.

Happiness is an expression of the soul in considered actions.

Wicked men obey out of fear; good men, out of love.

Men regard it as their right to return evil for evil and, if they cannot, feel they have lost their liberty

Dignity does not consist in possessing honors, but in deserving them.

Again, men in general desire the good, and not merely what their fathers had.

The virtue of justice consists in moderation, as regulated by wisdom.

To enjoy the things we ought, and to hate the things we ought, has the greatest bearing on excellence of character.

It is easy to perform a good action, but not easy to acquire a settled habit of performing such actions.

The generality of men are naturally apt to be swayed by fear rather than reverence, and to refrain from evil rather because of the punishment that it brings than because of its own foulness.

Happiness is prosperity combined with virtue.

Money was intended to be used in exchange, but not to increase at interest. And this term interest, which means the birth of money from money, is applied to the breeding of money because the offspring resembles the parent. Wherefore of all modes of getting wealth this is the most unnatural.

Character is that which reveals moral purpose, exposing the class of things a man chooses or avoids

No one will dare maintain that it is better to do injustice than to bear it.

Madness is badness of spirit, when one seeks profit from all sources.

Man, when perfected, is the best of animals, but when separated from law and justice, he is the worst of all.

One can aim at honor both as one ought, and more than one ought, and less than one ought. He whose craving for honor is excessive is said to be ambitious, and he who is deficient in this respect unambitious; while he who observes the mean has no peculiar name.

I call that law universal, which is conformable merely to dictates of nature; for there does exist naturally an universal sense of right and wrong, which, in a certain degree, all intuitively divine, even should no intercourse with each other, nor any compact have existed.