Best 1285 quotes in «ethics quotes» category

When you teach your students that it's "economically rational" to commit crimes where the fines for misconduct are lower than the expected return on the crime, you instill a professional ethic that has no room for morals.

Where there is politics or economics, there is no morality.

While we are guarding the country, we must accept being the guardian of the finest ethics. The country needs it and we must do it.

Why are we trying to measure social media like a traditional channel anyway? Social media touches every facet of business and is more an extension of good business ethics.

Without ethics man has no future. This is to say mankind without them cannot be itself. Ethics determine choices and actions and suggest difficult priorities.

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

Without integrity, no company can have positive word of mouth

Work ethic is the most important component of being successful.

You have to have a work ethic and you have to be educated in what you're doing. You have to take it seriously. It doesn't mean that everything you do has to be serious. But you've got to have the tools.

Work ethic = dreams! That to me is that no one gets a free ride. You have to work for it and it doesn't get handed to you.

Work ethic must exceed the expectation level.

You cannot advocate decency and ethics, you must design the conditions that eliminate the problems.  In scarcity, people will tend to steal.  If you make things available, people tend not to steal.

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

You don't carry in your countenance a letter of recommendation.

You have to get beyond blaming others . . . give up your excuses . . . stand responsible for what you do . . . ultimately, ethics ends up an individual exercise.

Work ethics eliminates fear.

You can never control how people respond to your work. You can only control your own work ethic.

You do not know our culture, our ethics, or the unwritten codes that already provide our society more order than could be obtained by any of your impositions.

You know the puritan ethic that started out four centuries ago in this country, needless to say - at least for the moment - a thing of the past - from what I can tell.

407Justice was like coloured balls in a magician's hand, changing colour and shape all the time beneath the light of politics.

You're born with intelligence, but not with ethics.

5:3 Do Not Wither within Your Area of Expertise ... But the lawyer must not allow the client to make a decision that the lawyer believes is wrong without a forceful and effective presentation by the lawyer of his or her position on the subject. When the matter is within the sphere of the lawyer's expertise, the lawyer must not permit the fear of being wrong to devour the lawyer's obligation to urge a course of action which the lawyer believes to be the best." (p.58)

Aesthetic sense is the twin of one's instinct for self-preservation and is more reliable than ethics.

About once or twice every month I engage in public debates with those whose pressing need it is to woo and to win the approval of supernatural beings. Very often, when I give my view that there is no supernatural dimension, and certainly not one that is only or especially available to the faithful, and that the natural world is wonderful enough—and even miraculous enough if you insist—I attract pitying looks and anxious questions. How, in that case, I am asked, do I find meaning and purpose in life? How does a mere and gross materialist, with no expectation of a life to come, decide what, if anything, is worth caring about? Depending on my mood, I sometimes but not always refrain from pointing out what a breathtakingly insulting and patronizing question this is. (It is on a par with the equally subtle inquiry: Since you don't believe in our god, what stops you from stealing and lying and raping and killing to your heart's content?) Just as the answer to the latter question is: self-respect and the desire for the respect of others—while in the meantime it is precisely those who think they have divine permission who are truly capable of any atrocity—so the answer to the first question falls into two parts. A life that partakes even a little of friendship, love, irony, humor, parenthood, literature, and music, and the chance to take part in battles for the liberation of others cannot be called 'meaningless' except if the person living it is also an existentialist and elects to call it so. It could be that all existence is a pointless joke, but it is not in fact possible to live one's everyday life as if this were so. Whereas if one sought to define meaninglessness and futility, the idea that a human life should be expended in the guilty, fearful, self-obsessed propitiation of supernatural nonentities… but there, there. Enough.

A culture capable of imagining complexly is a humble culture. It acts, when it has to act, as late in the game as possibl, and as cautiously, because it knows its girth and the tight confines of the china shop it's blundering into. And it knows that no matter how well prepared it is -- no matter how ruthlessly it has held its projections up to intelligent scrutiny -- the place it is headed for is going to very different from the place it imagined. The shortfall between the imagined and the real, multiplied by the violence of one's intent, equals the evil one will do.

A douchebag has an image to maintain. He is not real. He is the kind of guy who will change his last name into something cooler and more impressive.

Accepting necessary conflicts for the sake of improving the lives of children is the only fundamental moral crusade that matters.

A father acts on behalf of his children by working, providing, intervening, struggling, and suffering for them. In so doing, he really stands in their place. He is not an isolated individual, but incorporates the selves of several people in his own self. Every attempt to live as if he were alone is a denial of the fact that he is actually responsible. He cannot escape the responsibility, which is his because he is a father. This reality refutes the fictitious notion that the isolated individual is the agent of all ethical behavior. It is not the isolated individual but the responsible person who is the proper agent to be considered in ethical reflection.

...a guilty system recognizes no innocents. As with any power apparatus which thinks everybody’s either for it or against it, we’re against it. You would be too, if you thought about it. The very way you think places you among its enemies. This might not be your fault, because every society imposes some of its values on those raised within it, but the point is that some societies try to maximize that effect, and some try to minimize it. You come from one of the latter and you’re being asked to explain yourself to one of the former. Prevarication will be more difficult than you might imagine; neutrality is probably impossible. You cannot choose not to have the politics you do; they are not some separate set of entities somehow detachable from the rest of your being; they are a function of your existence. I know that and they know that; you had better accept it.

A group experience takes place on a lower level of consciousness than the experience of an individual. This is due to the fact that, when many people gather together to share one common emotion, the total psyche emerging from the group is below the level of the individual psyche. If it is a very large group, the collective psyche will be more like the psyche of an animal, which is the reason why the ethical attitude of large organizations is always doubtful. The psychology of a large crowd inevitably sinks to the level of mob psychology. If, therefore, I have a so-called collective experience as a member of a group, it takes place on a lower level of consciousness than if I had the experience by myself alone.

Ben Franklin said: "Early to bed and early to rise Make a man healthy wealthy and wise" Lately I have read the advice given to William Randolph Hearst, when a young man, by his father: "Go downtown at noon and rob the other fellows of what they have made during the morning.

All across the hexarchate were people like his older sister: loyal citizens, decent people in their day to day lives, many of whom had benefited even from a system that ran on regular ritualized torture.

All breathing, existing, living, sentient creatures should not be slain, nor treated with violence, nor abused, nor tormented, nor driven away.

All ethics and morals are culturally relative. And Esme's reaction taught me that while cultural relativism is an easy concept to process intellectually, it is not, for many, an easy one to remember.

All bastards take care of the poor.

All lines are gray in the dark.

All moral judgment is ultimately about the direction toward better or worse, never an absolute truth or fact.

All my life I'd thought of myself as an essentially good person, but all I'd been was comfortable.

All sufferers can find comfort in the solidarity of the Crucified; but only those who struggle against evil by following the example of the Crucified will discover Him at their side. To claim the comfort of the Crucified while rejecting His way is to advocate not only cheap grace but a deceitful ideology. Within the overarching theme of self-donation the theme of solidarity must be fully affirmed, for it underlines rightly the partiality of divine compassion towards the ‘harassed and helpless’.

all people are Nazis; for the animals it is an eternal Treblinka

All the social ills that law presumes to correct exist because people are not free to learn and grow.

All religions are man-made; God has not yet revealed himself beyond doubt to anybody.

Always be good to yourself and others. Always do what is right even if doing something wrong is quicker, more rewarding or easier. Always put truth in your every word and action, and never ignore your conscience until you die.

Almost any established decision procedure is better than a resort to force; for when force is used, people get hurt and the desire for retaliation is likely to lead to more violence. Moreover, most decision procedures produce results at least as beneficial and just as a resort to force.

Although profanity is part of our language that we speak everyday, it can simultaneity be used as a weapon to demoralize other people if it is offensive within its meaning.

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.

Altruism is not the product of religion, it precedes religion, and often times religion is its enemy.

A majority of people in these surveys also said that America gives too much aid--but when they were asked how much America should give, the median answers ranged from 5 percent to 10 percent of government spending. In other words, people wanted foreign aid 'cut' to an amount five to ten times greater than the United States actually gives!

Always polish the dirt for a refreshing start and seek out to build new mental structures that can help you to become rejuvenated.

A man’s most valuable possession is his integrity. Unless he has no integrity. In which case, he may not have much of anything of value.