The Ethics Quotes

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

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

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

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

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

The ethics of altruism has created the image of the brute, as its answer, in order to make men accept two inhuman tenets: (a) that any concern with one's own interests is evil, regardless of what these interests might be, and (b) that the brute's activities are in fact to one's own interest (which altruism enjoins man to renounce for the sake of his neighbors). For a view of the ~ Ayn Rand

Government should reflect the Ethics of its society, not the other way around. ~ Karry Lynn Dayton

We have become a nation of Kodachrome, Nikon, Instamatic addicts. But we haven't yet developed a clear idea of the ethics of picture-taking ... Where do we get the right to bring other people home in a canister? Where did we lose the right to control our image? ~ Ellen Goodman

Embryonic stem-cell research requires the destruction of life to create a stem cell. That's why I think we've got to be very careful in balancing the ethics and the science. ~ George W. Bush

men sat around discussing the ethics of eating and farming, while women did all the work.23 ~ Aaron Bobrow-Strain

[Hollywood] is a very male business, and it has in vast portions of it - the whole action movie part of it might as well be the United States Army in 1943 in that the ethics of it are, you know, boot camp and action movies and guns and explosions and all the rest of it, and that - so that means that about 50% of the business is not only pretty much closed off to women, but women don't even wanna be in it! ~ Nora Ephron

We have not reached ethical perfection in hunting. One never achieves perfection in anything, and perhaps it exists precisely so that one can never achieve it. Its purpose is to orient our conduct and to allow us to measure the progress accomplished. In this sense, the advancement achieved in the ethics of hunting is undeniable. ~ Jose Ortega Y Gasset

In the 1960s Martin Luther King Jr. devised a creative strategy of engagement that has since been adapted to many causes. He fused together the power of love as described in the Sermon on the Mount and Mahatma Gandhi's method of nonviolent resistance. "Prior to reading Gandhi," he said, "I had about concluded that the ethics of Jesus were only effective in individual relationships." Gandhi showed him that a movement on behalf of a moral cause could be expressed in a loving way. "I came to feel that this was the only morally and practically sound method open to oppressed people in their struggle for freedom. ~ Philip Yancey

First of all, you must never speak of anything by its name
in that country. So, if you see a tree on a mountain, it will be better to say 'Look at the green on the high'; for that's how they talk
in that country. And whatever you do, you must find a false reason for doing it
in that country. If you rob a man, you must say it is to help and protect him: that's the ethics
of that country. And everything of value has no value at all
in that country. You must be perfectly commonplace if you want to be a genius
in that country. And everything you like you must pretend not to like; and anything that is there you must pretend is not there
in that country. And you must always say that you are sacrificing yourself in the cause of religion, and morality, and humanity, and liberty, and progress, when you want to cheat your neighbour
in that country."
Good heavens!" cried Iliel, 'are we going to England? ~ Aleister Crowley

For my own part, I abandon the ethics of duty to the Hegelian critique with no regrets; it would appear to me, indeed, to have been correctly characterized by Hegel as an abstract thought, as a thought of understanding. ~ Paul Ricoeur

The Klingon snarled something that sounded horribly like Christy's pissed-off texts and everyone shut up. "First Spiner's Q and A, then Nimoy's tribute while Data gets his kicks with the Orion woman. Then signed pictures for Brett and D4C. We all convene at the panel about the ethics of the temporal prime directive. Q is making an appearance and revealing their agenda. Agreed?"
All nodded.
Christy opened her mouth, but closed it again, shaking her head. Good, because no amount of translation was going to suffice. ~ Elle Aycart

But when we get enough people who don't care, and who don't accept personal responsibility for high ethical standards, our organization gets the "M" disease. Mediocrity. Anybody in the place can be a carrier. By the same token, every individual can carry the cure: the ethics of excellence. ~ Price Pritchett

The ninth rule of the ethics of means and ends is that any effective means is automatically judged by the opposition as being unethical. ~ Saul Alinsky

The propounders of what are called the "ethics of evolution," when the 'evolution of ethics' would usually better express the object of their speculations, adduce a number of more or less interesting facts and more or less sound arguments, in favour of the origin of the moral sentiments, in the same way as other natural phenomena, by a process of evolution. I have little doubt, for my own part, that they are on the right track; but as the immoral sentiments have no less been evolved, there is, so far, as much natural sanction for the one as the other. The thief and the murderer follow nature just as much as the philanthropist. Cosmic evolution may teach us how the good and the evil tendencies of man may have come about; but, in itself, it is incompetent to furnish any better reason why what we call good is preferable to what we call evil than we had before. ~ Thomas Henry Huxley

No man can be a sound lawyer in this land who is not well read in the ethics of Moses and the virtues of Jesus. ~ Fisher Ames

The commandment, 'Love thy neighbour as thyself', is the strongest defence against human aggressiveness and an excellent example of the unpsychological [expectations] of the cultural super-ego. The commandment is impossible to fulfil; such an enormous inflation of love can only lower its value, not get rid of the difficulty. Civilization pays no attention to all this; it merely admonishes us that the harder it is to obey the precept the more meritorious it is to do so. But anyone who follows such a precept in present-day civilization only puts himself at a disadvantage vis-a-vis the person who disregards it. What a potent obstacle to civilization aggressiveness must be, if the defence against it can cause as much unhappiness as aggressiveness itself! 'Natural' ethics, as it is called, has nothing to offer here except the narcissistic satisfaction of being able to think oneself better than others. At this point the ethics based on religion introduces its promises of a better after-life. But so long as virtue is not rewarded here on earth, ethics will, I fancy, preach in vain. I too think it quite certain that a real change in the relations of human beings to possessions would be of more help in this direction than any ethical commands; but the recognition of this fact among socialists has been obscured and made useless for practical purposes by a fresh idealistic misconception of human nature. ~ Sigmund Freud

There is always only one question in the ethics of truth: how will I, as some-one, continue to exceed my own being? ~ Alain Badiou

Commerce has changed the ethics of citizenship and the incentives for national service. America now buys private contractors - we used to call them mercenaries - to do the country's fighting. ~ Michael Ignatieff

If people knew of ethics violations, they should have sent them to the Ethics Committee. If you think there was serious ethics violation that ought to be looked at, you don't hold it back for retaliatory purposes. ~ Barney Frank

The demands of the science, of the ethics and of the reason are superior to the demands of the people! ~ Mehmet Murat Ildan

People ask, 'Is the science going to run ahead of the ethics?' I don't think that's always the problem. I think it's that the science runs ahead of the politics. Bioethics can alert people to something coming down the road, but it doesn't mean policy and politicians are going to pay attention. They tend to respond when there's an immediate crisis. The job of the ethicist, in some ways, is to warn or be prophetic. You can yell loudly, but you can't necessarily get everybody to leave the cinema, so to speak. ~ Arthur Caplan

Young George spent more money on one day of his Inauguration Ceremonies than Richard Nixon did on his whole Campaign in 1972 - and Nixon was crucified as a Criminal Spendthrift with the ethics of a snake. ~ Hunter S. Thompson

Janitorial"

All morning he drifts the spacious lawns
like a gleaner, picking up this and that,
the summer clouds immense and building
toward afternoon, when the heat drives him
under the shade of the oak trees in the quad
and then along cool corridors inside
to pull down last term's flyers

For the chamber recital, the poetry reading,
the lecture on the ethics of cloning,
the dinner with some ambassador,
the debate between Kant and Heidegger,
the frat party, the sorority party, the kegger,
the weekend Bergman festival, the Wednesday
screening of Dumb and Dumber. He says
hello to fine young ladies, and tries
not to dwell on their halter tops,
their tanned thighs, shorts up to here.

At five he climbs into an old, dumpster-colored
olds, lights up and heads home
across the barge-ridden river in its servitude
to East St. Louis, where you know
this poem - glib, well-meaning, trivial--
grows tongue-tied, and cannot follow. ~ George Bilgere

The ethics of excellence are grounded in action - what you actually do, rather than what you say you believe. Talk, as the saying goes, is cheap. ~ Price Pritchett

The men who pile up the heaps of discussion and literature on the ethics of means and ends... are passionately committed to a mystical objectivity where passions are suspect. They assume a nonexistent situation where men dispassionately and with reason draw and devise means and ends as if studying a navigational chart on land. ~ Saul D. Alinsky

Jem's face showed brief indecision on the ethics of withholding his own dime, but his innate courtesy won and he shifted his dime to his pocket. I did likewise with no qualms. ~ Harper Lee

On the ethics of war the Quran and the New Testament are worlds apart. Whereas Jesus tells us to turn the other cheek, the Quran tells us, 'Whoso commits aggression against you, do you commit aggression against him' (2:194). The New Testament says nothing about how to wage war. The Quran, by contrast, is filled with just-war precepts. Here war is allowed in self-defense (2:190; 22:39), but hell is the punishment for killing other Muslims (4:93), and the execution of prisoners of war is explicitly condemned (47:4). Whether in the abstract is is better to rely on a scripture that regulates war or a scripture that hopes war away is an open question, but no Muslim-majority country has yet dropped an atomic bomb in war. ~ Stephen R. Prothero

There is also a trilogy of books out. I started reading right after Christmas Divergent. I went to read Insurgent after, and now I'm on the third one. I don't know, it's Detergent or whatever. But it's written by a 26-year-old girl. It's brilliant. But I'm about halfway through now on book number three. Wait until you get to book number three. Hello, Google genome project.

Technology is advancing at a rapid pace, and yet, morality and ethics are afterthoughts. We're excited about discovery and advancement, you know? We're in fact so excited that we don't even take the time to discuss or debate the moral dilemmas and implications of new technology. Sure, we're still in control of technology now, but does there come a time when we're not? Who will be the one that says turn it off? When do things go wrong?

I don't see anyone at Google or in the government or anyone at the forefront of technology boom that is contemplating the ethics and morality issues. Now that is a truly scary thought that doesn't come in a movie. ~ Glenn Beck

The ethics of editorial judgement, however, began to go though a sea change during the late 1970s and '80s when the Carter and Reagan Administrations de-regulated the television industry. ~ Roger Mudd

The basis for the ethics of the Sermon on the Mount is not what works, but rather who God is. ~ Stanley Hauerwas

I sent the first half of the dissertation to Rudolf Bultmann [major figures of early 20th century biblical studies and a prominent voice in liberal Christianity] as a courtesy with an invitation to respond to any points in my analysis and critique if he wished. I was speechless when I received a long letter from Bultmann, who had diligently examined the details of my arguments. His letter became a featured part of the publication in 1964 by Westminster Press of Radical Obedience: The Ethics of Rudolf Bultmann: With a Response by Rudolf Bultmann.
That book, more than any other , launched my career as a serious theologian. But it also led to my reputation as a situation ethicist, ironically just about the time I was beginning to disavow situation ethics. ~ Thomas C. Oden

Ethics is the politics of heaven. Politics is the ethics of hell. ~ Jakub Bozydar Wisniewski

Our very lives depend on the ethics of strangers, and most of us are always strangers to other people. ~ Bill Moyers

The librarian thought the problem was just that the right books weren't breeding with each other and proposed a forced mating program. The library committee had an epic secret meeting about the ethics of literary eugenics which ended in a furious deadlock. ~ Lev Grossman

I filed the ethics complaint against Tom DeLay not because I'm a Democrat and he's a Republican or even because he drew me out of my congressional seat but because he engaged in corruption to further his plans to disenfranchise voters in Texas. ~ Chris Bell

Constantinople had been changing for sometime before the Young Turks got hold of it. It would continue to change long after they had gone. ~ Charles Emmerson

We've gotta restore the American people's confidence in the ethics process by ensuring that political self-interest can no longer prevent politicians from enforcing ethics rules. ~ Barack Obama

The ethics of peace is liberal; it's not conservative based. ~ Henry Johnson Jr

It's possible to disagree with someone about the ethics of non-violence without wanting to kick his face in. ~ Christopher Hampton

For at this juncture, the West has cut itself off from its own Jewish and Christian roots - the faith, the ideas, the ethics and the way of life that made it the West. It now stands deeply divided, uncertain of its post-Christian identity, and with its dominance waning in the global era. ~ Os Guinness

If you are at a protest and you choose to take pictures or record video of people doing illegal things, you may end up putting that person in jail. That is, because you disapproved of someone's behavior, because you thought it was "violent" toward inanimate objects, or because you thought it might hurt the movement, you are choosing to assist the state in sending that living, breathing person to one fo the most violence places in the world, for the *express purpose* of destroying the movement. Even if you're right about the ethics or efficacy of property destruction--and I don't think you are--that is totally, utterly unconscionable, and it is far more violent and counter to the cause of justice than smashing a window ever could be. ~ Shareef Ali

The ethics of journalism are one thing. Another thing is the ethics of business. ~ Adam Michnik

The Bible contains legendary, historical, and ethical contents. It is quite possible to consider them separately, and one doesn't have to accept the legends in order to get the ethics. Fundamentalists make a grave mistake to insist on the letter of the writings, because they drive away many who can't swallow the Adam-and-Eve bit. ~ Isaac Asimov

I think the ethics and morals of genetic engineering are very complicated. It intrigues me. ~ Roger Spottiswoode

The seventh rule of the ethics of means and ends is that generally success or failure is a mighty determinant of ethics. The judgment of history leans heavily on the outcome of success or failure; it spells the difference between the traitor and the patriotic hero. There can be no such thing as a successful traitor, for if one succeeds he becomes a founding father. ~ Saul Alinsky

If you put yourself in a place where you're having to work at understanding something, then you keep yourself awake to all possible choices. How the body will look like in the future, the ethics of the body: those are questions that really fascinate me. Let's get the dialogue going. ~ Wayne McGregor

The Beat spokesman, surprisingly, seemed to be satisfied with the ethics that we have inherited. ~ Paul Goodman

There's no science that can't be used for good or for evil. Science could be used by whoever has the power to use it and desire to use it. If you make people knowledgeable about these sciences and don't point out this fact, then you're saying, I withdraw from the battle, from the discussion of the ethics involved. I just stick to the facts. And that of course means that you've surrendered to the strongest forces. You say you're neutral in what you do, you aren't that concerned with it. If the Pentagon is using your discoveries, that's not your problem. It's unavoidable that you have some responsibility, it seems to me, regardless of what you teach or what your subject is or what your skill is. Whatever you have to contribute has a social dimension. And I think it's ineffective to try to impose that on anybody. Sharing it with them is one thing, but trying to impose it is another. You honestly say these are my ideas and I have a right to my opinion, and if I have a right to my opinion then you have a right to your opinion.
"You can't have an individual right. It has to be a universal right. I have no rights that everybody else doesn't have. There's no right I could claim that anybody else in the world can't claim, and I have to fight for their exercising that right just like I have to fight for my own. That doesn't mean I have to impose my ideas on people, but it means I have a responsibility to provide whatever light I can on the subject and share my ideas with people. ~ Myles Horton

We abjure labels. We fight for money and an indefinable pride. The politics, the ethics, the moralities, are irrelevant. ~ Glen Cook

Live according to the ethics of excellence, and you can always stand proud. Pride - not vanity, but dignity and self-respect - should carry a lot of weight in helping you make decisions. Let pride help you decide. ~ Price Pritchett

Force, governmental coercion, is the instrument by which the ethics of altruism - the belief that the individual exists to serve others - is translated into political reality. ~ Nathaniel Branden

We maintain, and have said in the Ethics, if the arguments there adduced are of any value, that happiness is the realization and perfect exercise of virtue, and this not conditional, but absolute. And I used the term 'conditional' to express that which is indispensable, and 'absolute' to express that which is good in itself. ~ Aristotle.

When you hold out for high standards, people are impressed-but they don't always like you for it. Not everybody will be on your side in your struggle to do what's right and ethical. In fact, sometimes even you won't be on your side. You'll wrestle with inner conflict, torn between what you should do and what you want to do. You'll also aggravate other people. Seems when you walk the straight and narrow you always step on someone's toes. Don't count on the ethics of excellence to make you popular. ~ Price Pritchett

If you witness evil men committing evil deeds and do nothing, what does that make you? ~ K.L. Toth

To recognize untruth as a condition of life
that certainly means resisting accustomed value feelings in a dangerous way; and a philosophy that risks this would by that token alone place itself beyond good and evil. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

If we dare examine our decisions, we will see our values woven in and through every single one of them. Therefore, it would do us well to take an occasional peek to insure that our values remain at their peak. ~ Craig D. Lounsbrough

Obviously you have a responsibility - one would like to think there is such a thing as ethics in filmmaking. ~ George Hickenlooper

Some men don't gel when it comes to work - you have different work ethics, different opinions, different points of views, different methods of filmmaking - and we didn't gel. ~ Antoine Fuqua

Money is like manure; it's not worth a thing unless it's spread around encouraging young things to grow. ~ Thornton Wilder

Journalists are divided into two groups: those who live by ethics, and those who don't. ~ Manfred Gerstenfeld

If it is true that we cannot possess knowledge of what is good in any absolute sense, it is equally true that we have an ethical duty to decide between what is better and what is worse. ~ Richard Kearney

I'm not interested in what you say. I'm interested in what you do. But more than that, I'm interested in what you do when no one else is there to see it but you. And because I will never witness those moments, I hope that you do. ~ Craig D. Lounsbrough

I focus on what's really important in life. Quality rather than appearance...ethics rather than rules...integrity rather than domination...knowledge rather than achievement...serenity rather than acquisitions. ~ Wayne Dyer

As universities have turned into businesses, so students have turned into consumers. ~ Kenan Malik

A promise must never be broken. ~ Alexander Hamilton

Animals are more than ever a test of our character, of mankind's capacity for empathy and for decent, honorable conduct and faithful stewardship. We are called to treat them with kindness, not because they have rights or power or some claim to equality, but in a sense because they don't; because they all stand unequal and powerless before us. ~ Matthew Scully

I can be your savior, I can cloak you in gold, or I can be your worst nightmare. I can destroy your life, your career, everything can come crashing down around you. Chicago will become a place worse than hell because I get whatever I want when I want it. Those who get in my way never get back up after I knock them down. Nothing and no one is out of reach for me. So doctor, when I ask you what else, speak, and when you speak, don't waste my time preaching ethics and morality to me ... I have and want none. ~ J.J. McAvoy

Character is what you know you are, not what others think you have. ~ Marva Collins

If our life has no meaning other than our own happiness, we are likely to find that when we have obtained what we think we need to be happy, happiness itself still eludes us. ~ Peter Singer

An ethics of desire is good news for those of us who have become allergic to an ethics of law. ~ Jean Vanier

Picking your own jobs means you get to exercise your own ethics. But ethics isn't a science. Which is to say... You do your best... But that doesn't make you right. ~ Nathan Edmondson

My family are my priority but I've always had a strong work ethic and I like to be busy. ~ Amanda Holden

Better to quarrel with a friend than to support enemies. ~ Idries Shah

How is it possible that suffering that is neither my own nor of my concern should immediately affect me as though it were my own, and with such force that is moves me to action? ~ Arthur Schopenhauer

War is new to her, power to destroy her enemies untried. When a woman meets her enemy she has no code of ethics. She's unhampered by a sense of honor. She has a much keener sense of kill-or-be-killed than we men. A woman faces her enemy and destroys him. ~ Fern Michaels

Ethics are no more a part of poetry than theyare of painting. ~ Wallace Stevens

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

Cheats prosper until there are enough who bear grudges against them to make sure they do not prosper. ~ Peter Singer

You believe stealing is wrong, but if your family was starving and could not afford bread, wouldn't you say it's okay to steal a loaf to feed them? ~ A.J. Darkholme

Life is like walking through snow: every step shows. ~ Jess Lair

I not only believe in universal morality, but in more than one of them ~ Gregory B. Sadler

Bohr: Heisenberg, I have to say - if people are to be measured strictly in terms of observable quantities ...
Heisenberg: Then we should need a strange new quantum ethics. ~ Michael Frayn

You must question a code of ethics that never impedes your progress. ~ Robert Breault

Not being able to govern events, I govern myself ~ Michel De Montaigne

You would be surprised at how many corporations "none of your business" applies to! ~ Steven Magee

A quiet conscience makes one strong! ~ Anne Frank

To respect law, a man carries mercy with his endeavours. To respect ethics, he moves on wasteful relationships. ~ Harshit Walia

My parents instilled a very strong work ethic in me from a young age, fortunately. ~ Matthew Gray Gubler

Don't be too moral. You may cheat yourself out of much life so. ~ Henry David Thoreau

You cannot receive a shock unless you have an electric affinity for that which shocks you. ~ Henry David Thoreau

Our country, our people, and our laws have to be our top priority. ~ Donald J. Trump

Laws, religions, creeds, and systems of ethics, instead of making society better than its best unit, make it worse than its average unit, because they are never up to date. ~ George Bernard Shaw

If your conscience objects, surely God also objects since He is even greater. ~ Henry Hon

Where it is in our power to act, it is also in our power to not act. ~ Aristotle.

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