Quotes About Ethics

First grub, then ethics." He was implying that ethical decision-making may only be a luxury reserved for those of us who do not need to struggle simply to stay alive.

Greene: "It's not reasonable to expect actual humans to put aside nearly everything they love for the sake of the greater good. Speaking for myself, I spend money on my children that would be better spent on distant starving children, and I have no intention of stopping. After all, I'm only human! But I'd rather be a human who knows that he's a hypocrite, and who tries to be less so, than one who mistakes his species-typical moral limitations for ideal values.

Dogs and philosophers do the greatest good and get the fewest rewards. —DIOGENES

In the past hundred years, since Logical Positivists like Bertrand Russell and A. J. Ayer have argued that the idea of a rational basis for ethics is as impossible as a rational basis for the existence of God—or of the Tooth Fairy

When the German twentieth-century playwright Bertolt Brecht was asked what he thought of ethics, he replied, "First grub, then ethics." He was implying that ethical decision-making may only be a luxury reserved for those of us who do not need to struggle simply to stay alive.

Ad hominem: An abbreviation for argumentum ad hominem, meaning an argument against an idea or statement based on the character of the person who authored it. It is sometimes used to discredit a philosophy of life proclaimed by someone who does not live up to it himself, as in, "He talks the talk, but he doesn't walk the walk, so I'm not listening to his advice.

A man who strives after goodness in all his acts is sure to come to ruin, since there are so many men who are not good.

Epicurus said something similar when he wrote, "Death is nothing to us, since when we are, death has not come, and when death has come, we are not.

Similarly, in whatever enterprise you find yourself, practice predictability. Never impose your mood swings on your associates and customers. They should never be able to discover how your life is going. This is called being professional.

Promise less than you deliver

To really succeed in whatever is the business of your choice, you have to come to understand and utterly absorb into your being the fundamentally true idea that your activities in your business are virtuous and moral, provided of course that you conduct your business affairs honestly and honorably. Absorb this lesson into your heart and into your soul, and you will have overcome a major hurdle on your road to financial achievement.

Deep within traditional Jewish culture lies the conviction that the only real way to achieve wealth is to attend diligently to the needs of others and to conduct oneself in an honorable and trustworthy fashion.

real tragedy is never a straightforward confrontation between Good and Evil, but is, rather, much more exquisitely and much more agonizingly, a conflict between two irreconcilable views of the world.

Podem ir caçar, mas não se esqueçam de que nossa tradição nos lembra de abater apenas os seres da natureza suficientes para alimentar nosso corpo. Ninguém deve sacrificar um baripnia [parente] por esporte ou por prazer. Cada ser é nosso baripnia e devemos sempre respeitá-lo.

But Taft also believed that the citizen who obeys only laws that he endorses "is willing to govern, but not be governed"—willing, in other words, to destroy the rule of law.

He did not consider it "the function of law to jack up the moral tone of any community." That, he said, was "the function of the home and the church.

Terrorizing you," he proclaimed, "while you are carrying arms on our land, is a legitimate and morally demanded duty.

America's innate uneasiness with death from above. It ill accords with the values of a democratic republic.

Working in a system in which financial incentives have been reconfigured to make physician and patient economic rivals, it is hard for either patients or physicians to feel that their value constitutes true dignity-the value that has no price and belongs only to persons.' This is the value of those created in the image and likeness of God. Working

Scientific reductionism has threatened the spiritual aspects of medical practice from within, by denying the existence of the transcendent. The industrialization of health care now threatens the spiritual aspects of medical practice from without, denying the importance of the spiritual. Yet

No one is innocent after the experience of governing. But not everyone is guilty.

Que unos libros puedan alterar hasta tal punto nuestra conciencia y dejar que el mundo siga de mal en peor, es algo que deja sin palabras.

Dans ce monde, il faut être un peu trop bon pour l'être assez.

El humor, esa expresión irreductible de ética.