Ethics Quotes

... while transparency is a natural associate of liberalism, it falls short of implying rationalism. It is one aspiration, that social and ethical relations should not essentially rest on ignorance and misunderstanding of what they are, and quite another that all the beliefs and principles involved in them should be explicitly stated. That these are two different things is obvious with personal relations, where to hope that they do not rest on deceit and error is merely decent, but to think that their basis can be made totally explicit is idiocy. ~ Bernard Williams

Christianity is being compared with other religions as never before. Some so-called Christian leaders even advocate the working out of a system of morals, ethics, and religion that would bring together all the religions of the world. It cannot be done. Jesus Christ is unique. ~ Billy Graham

Good work requires enthusiasm, ethics, and excellence. ~ Daniel Goleman

Moral virtue is the quality of acting in the best way in relation to pleasures and pains, and that vice is the opposite. ~ Aristotle.

Such is the brutalization of commercial ethics in this country that no one can feel anything more delicate than the velvet touch of a soft buck. ~ Raymond Chandler

Shelving hard decisions is the least ethical course. ~ Adrian Cadbury

If ethics are poor at the top, that behavior is copied down through the organization. ~ Robert Noyce

If you want to test cosmetics, why do it on some poor animal who hasn't done anything? They should use prisoners who have been convicted of murder or rape instead. So, rather than seeing if perfume irritates a bunny rabbit's eyes, they should throw it in Charles Manson's eyes and ask him if it hurts. ~ Ellen DeGeneres

We see things like reciprocity which are fairly central to our view of ethics. But if you're talking about a set of worked-out rules on what we are supposed to do then, yes, it is a human product. ~ Peter Singer

One's concern with the ethics of means and ends varies inversely with one's personal interest in the issue. ~ Saul Alinsky

Good manners and soft words have brought many a difficult thing to pass. ~ John Vanbrugh

Those, who are believed to be most self - abased and humble, are generally in reality the most ambitious and envious ~ Baruch Spinoza

In ethics, prudence is not an important virtue, but in the world it is almost everything. ~ Mason Cooley

It is clear that something is seriously lacking in the way we humans are going about things. But what is it that we lack? The fundamental problem, I believe, is that at every level we are giving too much attention to the external, material aspects of life while neglecting moral ethics and inner values. By inner values, I mean the qualities that we all appreciate in others, and toward which we all have a natural instinct, bequeathed by our biological nature as animals that survive and thrive only in an environment of concern, affection, and warm-heartedness-or in a single word, compassion. The essence of compassion is a desire to alleviate the suffering of others and to promote their well-being. This is the spiritual principle from which all other positive inner value emerge. ~ Dalai Lama XIV

The thinking (person) must oppose all cruel customs, no matter how deeply rooted in tradition and surrounded by a halo. When we have a choice, we must avoid bringing torment and injury into the life of another. ~ Albert Schweitzer

I look for people who have raw intelligence and a great work ethic and loyalty, and I can quickly identify people who have the right ingredients. But sometimes it is more difficult to get them to accept the fact that they can take on increasing responsibility. Oftentimes individuals will decide how far [they] go by how much work they're willing to put in and how quick they are to ask for help. Too many people have this deep-seated fear that if they ask for help, they will be thought less of. ~ Hillary Clinton

Repetition does not transform a lie into a truth. ~ Franklin D. Roosevelt

Men are under as strong a compulsion to invent an ethical setting for their behavior as spiders are to weave themselves webs. ~ John Dos Passos

Any system of ethics must account for scarcity. If it doesn't, humanity would perish due to misallocation of finite resources, including one's own body. ~ Daniel Alexander Brackins

Although we cannot attain Jesus in his fullness unless at the same time we also take into account his unique relationship with God which has a special nature of its own, this does not of itself mean that Jesus' unique way of life is the only way to God. For even Jesus not only reveals God but also conceals him, since he appeared among us in non-godlike, creaturely humanity. As man he is a historical, contingent being who in no way can represent the full riches of God... unless one denies the reality of his real humanity (and that runs counter to the consensus of the church). So the gospel itself forbids us to speak of a Christian religious imperialism and exclusivism. ~ Edward Schillebeeckx

Refusal to stand up for what you believe in weakens individual morality and ethics as well as those of the culture. ~ Bell Hooks

Mass communication communicates massively: its language lacks precise articulation and avoids demanding terms; it argues for the kind of behavior in life which will make a "good program": ethic equals showbiz. ~ Frederic Raphael

Peace is a process - a way of solving problems. ~ John F. Kennedy

In ethics, there is a humility; moralists are usually righteous. ~ John Berger

O beautiful for spacious skies, ... O beautiful for heroes proved In liberating strife, Who more than self their country loved, And mercy more than life! America! America! May God thy gold refine, Til all success be nobleness And every gain divine! ~ Katharine Lee Bates

I believe there is a moral sense and a global ethic that commands attention from people of every religion and every faith, and people of no faith. But I think what's new is that we now have the capacity to communicate instantaneously across frontiers right across the world. ~ Gordon Brown

I learned so many things from Louis C.K., but the most impactful thing was witnessing his work ethic. He works harder than anyone I've ever been around in comedy. And he takes risks and doesn't dwell on what might be perceived as failures. ~ Ted Alexandro

Up till recently 75% of all inventions from the time of the industrial revolution is credited to the countries where Protestant ethics were taught ~ Sunday Adelaja

Solidarity is not an act of charity, but mutual aid between forces fighting for the same objective. ~ Samora Machel

We still have many shortcomings and failures to fulfill the Party's demands, especially as regards the liquidation in some of our people of survivals of the accursed past in consciousness and conduct and the fulfillment of the demands of our Soviet ethics and military discipline. ~ Filipp Golikov

I will choose what enters me, what becomes
of my flesh. Without choice, no politics,
no ethics lives. I am not your cornfield,
not your uranium mine, not your calf
for fattening, not your cow for milking.
You may not use me as your factory.
Priests and legislators do not hold shares
in my womb or my mind.
This is my body. If I give it to you
I want it back. My life
is a non-negotiable demand. ~ Marge Piercy

Christian ethics demand that you should not take revenge. The paradox is, naturally, that Christians worship a God who is the greatest avenger of them all. Defy him and you burn in eternal hell, an act of revenge which is completely out of proportion to the crime ~ Jo Nesbo

The Christian ethic played an essential part in my upbringing. ~ David Rockefeller

Pregnant women have no ethics. ~ Ursula K. Le Guin

There can be no friendship without confidence, and no confidence without integrity. ~ Samuel Johnson

The true man of science will know nature better by his finer organization; he will smell, taste, see, hear, feel, better than other men. His will be a deeper and finer experience. We do not learn by inference and deduction and the application of mathematics to philosophy, but by direct intercourse and sympathy. It is with science as with ethics,
we cannot know truth by contrivance and method; the Baconian is as false as any other, and with all the helps of machinery and the arts, the most scientific will still be the healthiest and friendliest man, and possess a more perfect Indian wisdom. ~ Henry David Thoreau

we want to seize the value and perspective of passing things, and so to pull ourselves up out of the maelstrom of daily circumstance. We want to know that the little things are little, and the big things big, before it is too late; we want to see things now as they will seem forever-"in the light of eternity." We want to learn to laugh in the face of the inevitable, to smile even at the looming of death. We want to be whole, to coordinate our energies by criticizing and harmonizing our desires; for coordinated energy: is the last word in ethics and politics, and perhaps in logic and metaphysics too. ~ Will Durant

We cannot have two hearts, one for the animals and one for men. In cruelty towards the former and cruelty to the latter there is no difference but in the victim. ~ Alphonse De Lamartine

Without ethics, science would be cruelty. ~ Nenia Campbell

I would almost consider myself a canonical child of Generation X ... because I think there is an ethic and aesthetic that goes along with that generation, it may have something to do with the fact that "Never Mind the Bollocks" was released when we were 16-years-old and that was really the album that crystalized a generation. ~ Mark Pesce

A warrior takes responsibility for his acts, for the most trivial of acts. An average man acts out his thoughts, and never takes responsibility for what he does. ~ Carlos Castaneda

The pen isn't really the weapon - the work ethic is the weapon. ~ Lemon Andersen

You know, kid, ethics isn't about choosing between right and wrong; it's about choosing between grey and grey. It's about choosing between two equally desirable but mutually exclusive courses of action. Freedom or security? Courage or comfort? Self-examination or blissful happiness? Column A or Column B? ~ Will Ferguson

I have my ethics and morals. I have my anchor point of what is right and wrong in real life, but I'm not afraid to entertain any and every aspect of personality in relationship to creating a character. ~ Corin Nemec

Every aspect of Western culture needs a new code of ethics - a rational ethics - as a precondition of rebirth. ~ Ayn Rand

We have in fact, two kinds of morality, side by side: one which we preach, but do not practice, and another which we practice, but seldom preach. ~ Bertrand Russell

Secular humanism is avowedly non-religious. It is a eupraxsophy (good practical wisdom), which draws its basic principles and ethical values from science, ethics, and philosophy. ~ Paul Kurtz

In just about every area of society, there's nothing more important than ethics. ~ Henry Paulson

Fear was stronger than ethics, stronger than judgement, stronger than responsibility, stronger than civilisation. Fear was a bolting animal trampling children underfoot as it fled from itself. Fear was a bigot, a tyrant, a coward, a red mist, a whore. Fear was a bullet pointed at his heart. ~ Salman Rushdie

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

We have then, in the first part of The Faerie Queene, four of the seven deadly sins depicted in the more important passages of the four several books; those sins being much more elaborately and powerfully represented than the virtues, which are opposed to them, and which are personified in the titular heroes of the respective books. The alteration which made these personified virtues the centre each of a book was probably part of the reconstruction on the basis of Aristotle Ethics.
The nature of the debt to Aristotle suggests that Spenser did not borrow directly from the Greek, but by way of modern translations. ~ Janet Spens

The materialist theory of history, that all politics and ethics are the expression of economics, is a very simple fallacy indeed. It consists simply of confusing the necessary conditions of life with the normal preoccupations of life, that are quite a different thing. It is like saying that because a man can only walk about on two legs, therefore he never walks about except to buy shoes and stockings. ~ G.K. Chesterton

Workaholics don't actually accomplish more than nonworkaholics. They may claim to be perfectionists, but that just mean they're wasting time fixating on inconsequential details instead of moving on to the next task. ~ David Heinemeier Hansson

Just as eunuchs will never know aesthetics as applied to the selection of beautiful women, so neither will pure rationalists ever know ethics, nor will they ever succeed in defining happiness, for happiness is a thing that is lived and felt, not a thing that is reasoned or defined. ~ Miguel

Science, as long as it limits itself to the descriptive study of the laws of nature, has no moral or ethical quality and this applies to the physical as well as the biological sciences. ~ Ernst Boris Chain

If we can get that realistic feminine morality working for us, if we can trust ourselves and so let women think and feel that an unwanted child or an oversize family is wrong
not ethically wrong, not against the rules, but morally wrong, all wrong, wrong like a thalidomide birth, wrong like taking a wrong step that will break your neck
if we can get feminine and human morality out from under the yoke of a dead ethic, then maybe we'll begin to get somewhere on the road that leads to survival. ~ Ursula K. Le Guin

I found that Nancy had a very advanced formulation of equity, ethics, and morals. It was as exceptional as it was different from the ideas usually held in connection with "proper" behavior and---in my opinion--- of a much higher order. It was free of hypocrisy!

Once when I needed friends very badly I found that Nancy was the most steadfast, generous, and unselfish friend that I had. I'm not ashamed to say that her conduct was touching to the point of tears. If such qualities were not unique they certainly were most unhappily rare.

On Nancy Cunard ~ Hilaire Hiler

Exalt the Cross! God has hung the destiny of the race upon it. Other things we may do in the realm of ethics, and on the lines of philanthropic reforms; but our main duty converges into setting that one glorious beacon of salvation, Calvary's Cross, before the gaze of every immortal soul. ~ Theodore L. Cuyler

It may not have the virtuous ring of the golden rule, but the maxim 'never say never' is one of the most important in ethics. ~ Julian Baggini

Can you hold a red-hot iron rod in your hand merely because some one wants you to do so? Then, will it be right on your part to ask others to do the same thing just to satisfy your desires? If you cannot tolerate infliction of pain on your body or mind by others' words and actions, what right have you to do the same to others through your words and deeds?
Do unto others as you would like to be done by. Injury or violence done by you to any life in any form, animal or human, is as harmful as it would e if caused to your own self. ~ Mahavira

A recent canvass of professional philosophers found the percentage of respondents who "accept or leans toward" various positions. On normative ethics, the results were deontology 25.9%; consequentialism 23.6%; virtue ethics 18.2%. On metaethics, results were moral realism 56.4%; moral anti-realism 27.7%. On moral judgment: cognitivism 65.7%; non-cognitivism 17.0% (Bourget and Chalmers 2009). ~ Nick Bostrom

Conscience is the chamber of justice. ~ Origen

I like Cinderella, I really do. She has a good work ethic. I appreciate a good, hard-working gal. And she likes shoes. The fairy tale is all about the shoe at the end, and I'm a big shoe girl. ~ Amy Adams

Authors as diverse as Matthew Arnold and George Orwell have given thought to the serious question: what is to be done about morals and ethics now that religion has so much decayed? Arnold went almost as far as to propose that the study of literature replace the study of religion. I must say that I slightly dread the effect that this might have had on literary pursuit, but as a source of ethical reflection and as a mirror in which to see our human dilemmas reflected, the literary tradition is infinitely superior to the childish parables and morality tales, let alone the sanguinary and sectarian admonitions, of the "holy" books. ~ Christopher Hitchens

You cannot have a boundary-less existence, because your neighbor has his own boundaries, and who is going to give you the ethics between the two boundaries? If there is no objective moral law, relativism will take hold, and relativism ultimately will lead to self-destruction. ~ Ravi Zacharias

I make up my own mind in light of available facts, with my own experience and a sense of personal ethics. ~ Ian Anderson

... With the 'death' of God worldly values proliferate, separate out and are drawn into endless conflict with one another. This process leads to the formation of a world torn by an infinite number of value-conflicts, for 'rational' (scientific) knowledge, which, for Weber, is limited to questions of fact rather than value, is unable to resolve the crisis of values that it itself inaugurated. ~ Nicholas Gane

Since religion has proved itself uniquely delinquent on the one subject where moral and ethical authority might be counted as universal and absolute, I think we are entitled to at least three provisional conclusions. The first is that religion and the churches are manufactured, and that this salient fact is too obvious to ignore. The second is that ethics and morality are quite independent of faith, and cannot be derived from it. The third is that religion is - because it claims a special divine exemption for its practices and beliefs - not just amoral but immoral. ~ Christopher Hitchens

Ethics and religion must not stay at home when we go to work. ~ Achille Silvestrini

Practice builds habits. Our habits are our character. When it comes to virtue, practice makes a very great difference - or rather, all the difference. ~ Eric Greitens

He was moderately truthful towards men, but to women lied like a Cretan-a system of ethics above all others calculated to win popularity at the first flush of admission into lively society. ~ Thomas Hardy

Decency: the inexplicable: the ground of all ethics. Things we do not do. We do not stare when the soul leaves the body, but veil our eyes with tears or cover them with our hands. We do not stare at scars, which are places where the soul has struggled to leave and been forced back, closed up, sewn in. ~ J.M. Coetzee

The ethics of plagiarism have turned into the narcissism of small differences: because journalism cannot own up to its heavily derivative nature, it must enforce originality on the level of the sentence. ~ Malcolm Gladwell

The pleasures arising from thinking and learning will make us think and learn all the more. 1153a 23 ~ Aristotle.

Bullying is an attack upon the runts of the litter - the weak of the species, and it is predicated on a lack of bond with the parents. If a child has a secure bond with the parents, that forms a force-field around the child in terms of bullying. If the child does not have a strong bond with the parents, then it's like being separated from the herd - those
are the ones who get picked off by the human predators in childhood and adulthood. So keep your contacts as close as you can, they provide an amazing shield against bullies and users. ~ Stefan Molyneux

The moral is that the shape of a society must depend on the ethical nature of the individual and not on any political system however apparently logical or respectable. ~ William Golding

It may be considered folly by common opinion but this refusal to destroy life unnecessarily, this reverence for it, must become a deeply implanted part of his ethical standard. ~ Paul Brunton

His moral lecture
blazed with hate.
What could have driven a child that far? ~ Dag Hammarskjold

What men do matters more than what they know. ~ John Christopher

Notice that "I" is at the center of the word "ethical." There is no "they." Achieving the ethics of excellence is our individual assignment. ~ Price Pritchett

Masonry is first and foremost an education society, one which TEACHES moral and ethics - a way of life. Secondly, ~ Cliff Porter

The supernatural worldview is causing a great number of otherwise intelligent people to cling to a collection of atavistic concepts that have not, and never will serve humanity in any ultimately beneficial way. Any benefits that spirituality ostensibly provides to its adherents, can be found equally in the worldview of philosophy and ethics, communities of other kinds, and so on. It's a myth that the only morality, hope, purpose and comfort to be found, resides only in the supernatural. ~ Kelli Jae Baeli

An action done from duty has its moral worth, not in the purpose to be attained by it, but in the maxim according with which it is decided upon; it depends therefore, not on the realization of the object of action, but solely on the principle of volition in accordance with which, irrespective of all objects of the faculty of desire, the action has been performed. ~ Immanuel Kant

People even talk of being "on the wrong side of history," as though they knew not only what the last twenty years had produced, but what the next twenty years were going to produce as well. The idolization of "progress," of "moving with the times," is part of the same movement. "Now that we live in the twenty-first century . . ." people begin, as though it were obvious that one's ethics or theology ought to change with the calendar. All this is a form of creeping pantheism, of looking at certain trends in the wider world and deducing that they are what "God" is doing. (It's also very selective; it cheerfully screens out all the inventions of modernism, such as guillotines and gas chambers, which do not exactly fit the picture of an upward journey into light.) ~ N. T. Wright

Unfortunately, I think a lot of people are affected more by the idea of fame than the actual work ethic involved. A lot of them just want to be reality TV-type people who don't do anything. ~ Katy Perry

No man is a man without high morals and ethics. ~ Mehmet Murat Ildan

Let us understand, once for all, that the ethical progress of society depends, not on imitating the cosmic process, still less in running away from it, but in combating it. ~ Thomas Henry Huxley

Ethics is for people with full bellies. ~ John Kessel

Whether I'm reading a national publication or one of my local Chicago newspapers, I don't need to turn too many pages before I stumble upon another scandal. Not only do ethics violations deteriorate the public trust, but they also disrupt and undermine legitimate debate and policy. ~ Mike Quigley

Good Bones

Life is short, though I keep this from my children.
Life is short, and I've shortened mine
in a thousand delicious, ill-advised ways,
a thousand deliciously ill-advised ways
I'll keep from my children. The world is at least
fifty percent terrible, and that's a conservative
estimate, though I keep this from my children.
For every bird there is a stone thrown at a bird.
For every loved child, a child broken, bagged,
sunk in a lake. Life is short and the world
is at least half terrible, and for every kind
stranger, there is one who would break you,
though I keep this from my children. I am trying
to sell them the world. Any decent realtor,
walking you through a real shithole, chirps on
about good bones: This place could be beautiful,
right? You could make this place beautiful. ~ Maggie Smith

Often when religious leaders come together, they talk about a particular sexual ethic, or an abstruse doctrine, as though this, rather than compassion, was the test of spiritual life. ~ Karen Armstrong

Being a woman, I have found the road rougher than had I been born a man. Different defenses, different codes of ethics, different approaches to problems and personalities are a woman's lot. I have preferred to shun what is known as feminine wiles, the subterfuge of subtlety, reliance on tears and coquetry to shape my way. I am forthright, often blunt. I have learned to be a realist despite my romantic, emotional nature. I have no illusions that age, the rigors of my profession, disappointments, and unfulfilled dreams have not left their mark.

I am proud that I have carved my path on earth almost entirely by my own efforts, proud that I have compromised in my career only when I had no other recourse, when financial or contractual commitments dictated. Proud that I have never been involved in a physical liaison unless I was deeply attracted or in love. Proud that, whatever my worldly goods may be, they have been achieved by my own labors. ~ Joan Fontaine

Without "ethical culture", there is no salvation for humanity. ~ Albert Einstein

For one swallow does not make a summer, nor does one day; and so too one day, or a short time, does not make a man blessed and happy. ~ Aristotle.

The greatest men stand on their values and pray on their knees. ~ Craig D. Lounsbrough

Having George W. Bush giving a lecture on business ethics is like having a leper give you a facial, it just doesn't work! ~ Robin Williams

While he spoke, he never even made it in front of the ethics review. Quit the day before. Made a lot of fuss, walking through the lab and yelling that we weren't going to be able to push him around anymore. That he had a bigwig corporate job with all the funding and resources he wanted. Called us small-minded pencil pushers ~ James S.A. Corey

There are problems to whose solution I would attach an infinitely greater importance than to those of mathematics, for example touching ethics, or our relation to God, or concerning our destiny and our future; but their solution lies wholly beyond us and completely outside the province of science. ~ Carl Friedrich Gauss

Nietzsche believed that if Pity were to become the core of ethics, misery would become contagious and happiness an object of suspicion ~ Arundhati Roy

Economics and ethics have little in common. ~ Agnes Repplier