Quotes About Ethics

Science is not wisdom.

Moral principles do not depend on a majority vote. Wrong is wrong, even if everybody is wrong. Right is right, even if nobody is right.

Why is it that any time we speak of temptation we always speak of temptation as something that inclines us to wrong. We have more temptations to become good than we do to become bad.

We are all born with the power of speech, but we need grammar. Conscience, too, needs Revelation.

When the will loves anything that is below it in dignity, it degrades itself.

The old liberal rebelled against taxation without responsibility, the new liberal wants the taxation as a handout without responsibility.

Counsel involving right and wrong should never be sought from a man who does not say his prayers.

The wicked fear the good, because the good are a constant reproach to their consciences. The ungodly like religion in the same way that they like lions, either dead or behind bars; they fear religion when it breaks loose and begins to challenge their consciences.

What is discovered may be abused, but that does not mean the discovery was evil.

Buddha wrote a code which he said would be useful to guide men in darkness, but he never claimed to be the Light of the world. Buddhism was born with a disgust for the world, when a prince's son deserted his wife and child, turning from the pleasures of existence to the problems of existence. Burnt by the fires of the world, and already weary with it, Buddha turned to ethics.

Our Blessed Lord left the world without leaving any written message. His doctrine was Himself. Ideal and History were identified in Him. The truth that all other ethical teachers proclaimed, and the light that they gave to the world, was not IN them, but OUTSIDE them. Our Divine Lord, however, identified Divine Wisdom with Himself. It was the first time in history that it was ever done, and it has never been done since.

Socialism increases in direct ratio and proportion with the surrender of personal responsibility to neighbor.

Remarriage while the true partner is living is a vain attempt to give respectability to dishonor by invoking a human law that overthrows God's law:

We simply cannot put a man into a crucible to see if he will give off unmistakable green fumes of envy.

What the new morality resolves itself into is this: You are wrong if you do a thing you do not feel like doing; and you are right if you do a thing you feel like doing. Such a morality is based not only on "fastidiousness," but on "facetiousness." The standard of morality then becomes the individual feeling of what is beautiful, instead of the rational estimate of what is right.

hunger is not just an economic problem. It is a moral and spiritual problem.

The method of adjusting moral principles to the way men live is just such a perversion of the due order of things.

the right to self-preservation could become egotism, and the power of generation could become license

Three dominant evils prevailed—clerical concubinage, simony

We lose our souls not only by the evil we do but also by the good we leave undone.

A character is made by the kind of thoughts a man thinks when alone, and a civilization is made by the kind of thoughts a man speaks to his neighbor. On

An unsuffering Christ Who did not freely pay the debt of human guilt would be reduced to the level of an ethical guide;

The right of the Capitalist to his capital and the right of the laborer to his union, are both conditioned upon the services they render to society; they both require social justification, and they can both be revoked if the common good is not served, just as the right to drive an automobile can be revoked if one refuses to respect the lives of pedestrians or even the lives of jaywalkers.

Some faces are never so gay as when regaling a scandal, which the generous heart would cover and the devout heart pray over.