Quotes on Ethics

For the human mind is seldom at stay: If you do not grow better, you will most undoubtedly grow worse.

To free us from the expectations of others, to give us back to ourselves - there lies the great, singular power of self-respect.

Everybody, my friend, everybody lives for something better to come. That's why we want to be considerate of every man - Who knows what's in him, why he was born and what he can do?

The understanding of mathematics is necessary for a sound grasp of ethics.

Before the counter-culture revolutionary Li Lian was executed in 1971 for criticising the Cultural Revolution, pour policemen pushed her face against the window of a truck, lifted her shirt and cut out her kidneys with a surgical knife,’ Mau Sen said, his face stony and white. ‘I think that removing the organs of convicts while they are still alive is too much. It completely contravenes medical ethics.’ ‘This is a dissection class, not a political meeting,’ Sun Chunlin said.

.. that a rule, which, in speculation, may seem the most advantageous to society, may yet be found, in practice, totally pernicious and destructive.

Frequently consider the connection of all things in the universe. .. We should not say 'I am an Athenian' or 'I am a Roman' but 'I am a citizen of the Universe.

Though One Brahman is the Cause of the Many. ... Behold but One in all things it is the second that leads you astray.

Surround yourself with people who take their work seriously, but not themselves, those who work hard and play hard.

Where no guiding ideals are left to point the way, the scale of values disappears and with it the meaning of our deeds and sufferings, and at the end can lie only negation and despair. Religion is therefore the foundation of ethics, and ethics the presupposition of life.

The harm that theology has done is not to create cruel impulses, but to give them the sanction of what professes to be lofty ethic, and to confer an apparently sacred character upon practices which have come down from more ignorant and barbarous times.

For those who are always courteous and respectful of elders, four things increase: life, beauty, happiness and strength.

Do not believe what you have heard Do not believe in tradition because it is handed down many generations Do not believe in anything that has been spoken of many times Do not believe because the written statements come from some old sage Do not believe in conjecture Do not believe in authority, or teachers, or elders But after careful observation and analysis, when it agrees with reason and it will benefit one and all, then accept it and live by it.

Rather fail with honor than succeed by fraud.

It is in everybody's interest to seek those [actions] that lead to happiness and avoid those which lead to suffering. And because our interests are inextricably linked, we are compelled to accept ethics as the indispensable interface between my desire to be happy and yours.

All things come out of the one, and the one out of all things.

I care not so much what I am to others as what I am to myself. I will be rich by myself, and not by borrowing.

During my eighty-seven years I have witnessed a whole succession of technological revolutions. But none of them has done away with the need for character in the individual or the ability to think.

Faced with what is right, to leave it undone shows a lack of courage.

I do not believe that a man should be restrained in his daily actions by being afraid of punishment after death or that he should do things only because in this way he will be rewarded after he dies. This does not make sense. The proper guidance during the life of a man should be the weight that he puts upon ethics and the amount of consideration that he has for others.

If the aim is globalization without marginalization, we can no longer tolerate a world in which there live side by side the immensely rich and the miserably poor, the have-nots deprived even of essentials and people who thoughtlessly waste what others so desperately need. Such countries are an affront to the dignity of the human person. He further said, Ethics demand that systems be attuned to the needs of man, and not that man be sacrificed for the sake of the system.