Quotes on Ethics

Are right and wrong convertible terms, dependant upon popular opinion?

Little boldness is needed to assail the opinions and practices of notoriously wicked men; but to rebuke great and good men for their conduct, and to impeach their discernment, is the highest effort of moral courage.

A lively and lasting sense of filial duty is more effectually impressed on the mind of a son or daughter by reading King Lear, than by all the dry volumes of ethics, and divinity that ever were written.

Morality [or ethics] is not a subject; it is a life put to the test in dozens of moments.

Ethics is knowing the difference between what you have a right to do and what is right to do.

All systems of morality are based on the idea that an action has consequences that legitimize or cancel it. A mind imbued with the absurd merely judges that those consequences must be considered calmly.

There is a concept that is the corrupter and destroyer of all others. I speak not of Evil, whose limited empire is that of ethics; I speak of the infinite.

If you have some respect for people as they are, you can be more effective in helping them to become better than they are.

Man is appealed to be guided in his acts, not merely by love, which is always personal, or at best tribal, but by his perception of his oneness with each human being. In the practice of mutual aid, which we can re-trace to the earliest beginnings of evolution, we thus find the positive and undoubted origin of our ethical conceptions; and we can affirm that in the ethical progress of man, mutual support- not mutual struggle- has had the leading part.

You have to work from one point to go to another. So I admire work ethic, I think it should be reinforced through our neighborhoods, that everybody should work hard, practice makes perfect, you have to be diligent with what you want, you have to apply yourself, you have to motivate your self. You have to do for self by yourself, and then you can do things for other people. That's what I had to do, I had to do for self.

The difference between literature and journalism is that journalism is unreadable and literature is not read.

True independence and freedom can only exist in doing what's right.

Every man, in his own opinion, forms an exception to the ordinary rules of morality.

People don't understand that when I grew up, I was never the most talented. I was never the biggest. I was never the fastest. I certainly was never the strongest. The only thing I had was my work ethic, and that's been what has gotten me this far.

Do not do an immoral thing for moral reasons.

Be true to your work, your word, and your friend.

Now the relation which, in the sphere of nature, being and semblance or sensation bear to one another in this antithesis, is the same as that which in ethics exists between good and pleasure or feeling.

The law isn't justice. It's a very imperfect mechanism. If you press exactly the right buttons and are also lucky, justice may show up in the answer. A mechanism is all the law was ever intended to be.

A man's ethical behaviour should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties and needs; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death.

Our identities have no bodies, so, unlike you, we cannot obtain order by physical coercion. We believe that from ethics, enlightened self-interest, and the commonweal, our governance will emerge.

Today, the fundamental global objective of all education aspiring not only to progress but to the survival of humanity is to Civilize and Unify the Earth and Transform the human species into genuine humanity The education of the future should teach an ethics of planetary understanding.