Quotes on Ethics

Life's unfairness is not irrevocable; we can help balance the scales for others, if not always for ourselves.

I have met many entrepreneurs who have the passion and even the work ethic to succeed - but who are so obsessed with an idea that they don't see its obvious flaws. Think about that. If you can't even acknowledge your failures, how can you cut the rope and move on?

To me, it really seems visible today that ethics is not something exterior to the economy, which, as technical matter, could function on its own; rather, ethics is an interior principle of the economy itself, which cannot function if it does not take account of the human values of solidarity and reciprocal responsibility.

If your morals make you dreary, depend upon it they are wrong.

A people and their religion must be judged by social standards based on social ethics. No other standard would have any meaning if religion is held to be necessary good for the well-being of the people.

I wasn't the biggest, the fastest, the strongest, and then I bought into something called work ethic.

The final test of a gentleman is his respect for those who can be of no possible service to him.

No one is happy unless he respects himself.

Power tends to confuse itself with virtue, and a great nation is peculiarly susceptible to the idea that its power is a sign of God's favor.

Necessity may well be called the mother of invention but calamity is the test of integrity.

Once we assuage our conscience by calling something a "necessary evil", it begins to look more and more necessary and less and less evil.

The minute you get away from fundamentals – whether its proper technique, work ethic or mental preparation – the bottom can fall out of your game, your schoolwork, your job, whatever you’re doing.

...it is not necessary to the child to awaken to the sense of the strange and humorous by giving a man a luminous nose...to the child it is sufficiently strange and humorous to have a nose at all.

The ethic of truth is the complete opposite of an 'ethics of communication'. It is an ethic of the Real The ethic of truth is absolutely opposed to opinion, and to ethics in general.

Nothing is less important than which fork you use. Etiquette is the science of living. It embraces everything. It is ethics. It is honor.

Ultimately a highly complex sentiment, having its first origin in the social instincts, largely guided by the approbation of our fellow-men, ruled by reason, self-interest, and in later times by deep religious feelings, confirmed by instruction and habit, all combined, constitute our moral sense or conscience.

If you look to lead, invest at least 40% of your time managing yourself - your ethics, character, principles, purpose, motivation, and conduct. Invest at least 30% managing those with authority over you, and 15% managing your peers.

God grant me the courage not to give up what I think is right even though I think it is hopeless.

It is a terrible, an inexorable, law that one cannot deny the humanity of another without diminishing one's own: in the face of one's victim, one sees oneself.

Moral philosophy is nothing else but the science of what is good, and evil, in the conversation, and society of mankind. Good, and evil, are names that signify our appetites, and aversions; which in different tempers, customs, and doctrines of men, are different.

... the friendship of worthless people has a bad effect (because they take part, unstable as they are, in worthless pursuits, and actually become bad through each other's influence). But the friendship of the good is good, and increases in goodness because of their association. They seem even to become better men by exercising their friendship and improving each other; for the traits that they admire in each other get transferred to themselves.