Quotes About Ethics

All the means by which one has so far attempted to make mankind moral were through and through immoral.

The former morality, namely Kant's, demanded of the individual actions which one desired of all men: that was a very naive thing;

there are no moral facts at all.

the moral man presupposes that that which concerns himself most nearly must also be the heart and soul of things.

To recognize untruth as a condition of life: that, to be sure, means to resist customary value-sentiments in a dangerous fashion; and a philosophy which ventures to do so places itself, by that act alone, beyond good and evil.

We uproot the foundation of morality when we uproot boundary-stones.

Already even politics ceases to be the business of a gentleman ; and it is possible that one day it may be found to be so vulgar as to be brought, like all party literature and daily literature, under the rubric : Prostitution of the intellect.

Christianity is a hangman's metaphysics…

we immoralists especially are trying with all our might to remove the concept of guilt and the concept of punishment from the world and to purge psychology, history, nature, the social institutions and sanctions of them

I am by far the most terrible human being that has existed so far; this does not preclude the possibility that I shall be the most beneficial.

Morality is a fiction used by a herd of inferior human beings to hold back the few superior ones..!!

This the Church understood: it corrupted the human being, it weakened him – but it claimed to have 'improved' him…

We new philosophers, however, not only do we begin by presenting the actual gradations in rank and variations in value among us but we also desire the very opposite of an assimilation, an equalizing: we teach estrangement in every sense, we tear open gaps as never were, we want man to become more wicked than he ever was.

For, why is the triumph of Nihilism inevitable now? Because the very values current amongst us to-day will arrive at their logical conclusion in Nihilism,—because Nihilism is the only possible outcome of our greatest values and ideals,—because we must first experience Nihilism before we can realise what the actual worth of these "values" was....

Aside from a few philosophers, men have always placed pity rather low in the hierarchy of moral feelings—and rightly so.

What does your conscience say? — 'You shall become the person you are.

For the highest man shall also be the highest lord on earth. There is no sorer misfortune in all human destiny, than when the mighty of the earth are not also the first men. Then everything becomes false and distorted and monstrous. And when they are even the last men, and more beast than man, then rises and rises the populace in honour, and at last says even the populace-virtue: 'Behold, I alone am virtue!

When law is no longer a tradition, as in our case, it can only be commanded, or forced; none of us has a traditional sense of justice any longer; therefore we must content ourselves with arbitrary laws, which express the necessity of having to have a law.

Omul e doar o funie, întins? între bestie ÅŸi Supraom — o funie peste un abis

One has watched life badly if one has not also seen the hand that considerately--kills.

Beware that, when fighting monsters, you yourself do not become a monster... for when you gaze long into the abyss. The abyss gazes also into you.

Science is of no value unless it is accompanied by social concern.

Broadmindedness, when it means indifference to right and wrong, eventually ends in a hatred of what is right.

There are ultimately only two possible adjustments to life; one is to suit our lives to principles; the other is to suit principles to our lives. If we do not live as we think, we soon begin to think as we live. The method of adjusting moral principles to the way men live is just a perversion of the order of things.