Quotes About Ethics

Excellence, then, is a state concerned with choice, lying in a mean, relative to us, this being determined by reason and in the way in which the man of practical wisdom would determine it.

Perfect friendship is the friendship of men who are good, and alike in excellence for these wish well alike to each other qua good, and they are good in themselves.

Education and morals will be found almost the whole that goes to make a good man.

Evil draws men together.

Law is mind without reason.

Let us be well persuaded that everyone of us possesses happiness in proportion to his virtue and wisdom, and according as he acts in obedience to their suggestion.

Man perfected by society is the best of all animals; he is the most terrible of all when he lives without law, and without justice.

No man of high and generous spirit is ever willing to indulge in flattery; the good may feel affection for others, but will not flatter them.

The wicked have no stability, for they do not remain in consistency with themselves; they continue friends only for a short time, rejoicing in each other?s wickedness.

We must as second best...take the least of the evils.

What the statesman is most anxious to produce is a certain moral character in his fellow citizens, namely a disposition to virtue and the performance of virtuous actions.

Anybody can become angry — that is easy, but to be angry with the right person and to the right degree and at the right time and for the right purpose, and in the right way — that is not within everybody's power and is not easy.

The high-minded man must care more for the truth than for what people think.

There is no higher value in our society than integrity.

I am very much opposed to abortion personally. But I don't think it is the government's rule.

The Righteous Mind, for example, Jonathan Haidt

Part of the psychological program is that people think they're free when they're not," he said. "A company may be free to pollute, but that means the people aren't free to swim.

Companies made money and were beholden to stockholders; it was understandable if they tried to "cover their ass," people told me. But the government was paid to protect people, so one could expect much more of them.

Es cierto... Hay un momento en la vida en que tenemos necesidad de ser canallas, de ensuciarnos hasta adentro, de hacer alguna infamia, yo qué sé... de destrozar para siempre la vida de un hombre... y después de hecho eso podremos volver a caminar tranquilos.

A moderately bad man knows he is not very good: a thoroughly bad man thinks he is all right . . . Good people know about both good and evil: bad people do not know about either.

We conduct our lives according to our sense of right and wrong. We somehow possess an awareness of what we "ought" to do. When we fail to do what we "ought," a part of our mind we call "conscience" evokes an unpleasant feeling we call "guilt." Is that feeling—present in almost all individuals—an indication of a God-given moral law? Or does it simply reflect what we have been taught by our parents?

Freud, however, asserts that ethics and morals come from human need and experience. The idea of a universal moral law as proposed by philosophers is "in conflict with reason." He writes that "ethics are not based on a moral world order but on the inescapable exigencies of human cohabitation." In other words, our moral code comes from what humans find to be useful and expedient.

When a man is getting worse, he understands his own badness less and less. A moderately bad man knows he is not very good: a thoroughly bad man thinks he is all right . . . Good people know about both good and evil: bad people do not know about either.

From this point of view, a male cuttlefish who copulates with a dead female is not only wasting his time but making a serious philosophical mistake.