Quotes About Ethics

Usually, terrible things that are done with the excuse that progress requires them are not really progress at all, but just terrible things.

Anything that isn't opposed by about 40 percent of humanity is either an evil business or so unimportant that it simply doesn't matter.

Reporters thrive on the world's misfortune. For this reason they often take an indecent pleasure in events that dismay the rest of humanity.

When you have never done a thing before and that thing is not simply and clearly right or wrong, you frequently do not know if it is a cruel thing, you just go ahead and do it. Maybe later you'll be able to determine whether you acted cruelly. Too late, of course, but at least you'll know.

Of all the animals on this planet, we are surely the nastiest, the most deceitful, the most murderous and vile. Despite our God, or because of him. Both.

Even as a junkie I stayed true [to vegetarianism] - 'I shall have heroin, but I shan't have a hamburger.' What a sexy little paradox.

The advantage of a classical education is that it enables you to despise the wealth that it prevents you from achieving.

The natural law is an instrument for progress, not a weapon of revolution.

Because "we human beings are imaginative by nature, we cannot choose to live by the routine of the ant-heap. If deprived of the imagery of virtue" — imaginative depictions of the truly good life — "we will seek out the imagery of vice.

Ordinary human laws are the means -- however imperfect -- by which we express our understanding of the enduring moral law.

They offer few alternatives to the alleged benefits of the Welfare State, shrugging their shoulders; and the creed of most of them is no better than a latter-day Utilitarianism

Worse still, what future have a people whose schooling has enabled them, at best, to ascertain the price of everything—but the value of nothing?

Roepke was no apologist for an abstraction called "capitalism"—a Marxist term, incidentally, foolishly pinned to themselves by numerous vainglorious champions of economic competition. He knew that the worship of Mammon is damnable.

Richard Weaver in his book, "Ethics of Rhetoric" calls a "god-term": a charismatic expression drained dry of any objective significance, but remaining an empty symbol intended to win unthinking applause

Most men and women are good only from habit, or out of deference to the opinions of their neighbors, the friend to tradition argues; and to deprive them of their habits, customs, and precepts, in order to benefit them in some novel way, may leave them morally and socially adrift, more harmed by their loss of ethical sanctions than helped by the fancied new benefit.

the big decisions we face in life, the wild problems—whether to marry, who to marry, whether to have children, what career path to follow, how much time to devote to friends and family, how to resolve daily ethical dilemmas—these big decisions can't be made with data, or science, or the usual rational approaches.

So how, in an increasingly interconnected world, do we integrate and still keep our values?

The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated." —GANDHI It's

Expensive medicines are always good: if not for the patient, at least for the druggist

With lies you may get ahead in the world - but you can never go back.

With lies you may get ahead in the world — but you can never go back.

Part of being a man is doing what is right, no matter what people think of you. That is the sacrifice you must make.

If we justify war, it is because all peoples always justify the traits of which they find themselves possessed, not because war will bear an objective examination of its merits.

The happiest excitement in life is to be convinced that one is fighting for all one is worth on behalf of some clearly seen and deeply felt good.