Best 1285 quotes in «ethics quotes» category

Most of us care about one another. Human beings have considerably more in common with one another than they do differences. One’s religion, political persuasion, family, financial and social status, or vocation does not hamper the common thread of personal decency running through most of humankind.

Most of us believe that eating meat is natural because humans have hunted and consumed animals for millennia. And it is true that we have been eating meat as part of an omnivorous diet for at least two million years (though for the majority of this time our diet was still primarily vegetarian). But to be fair, we must acknowledge that infanticide, murder, rape, and cannibalism are at least as old as meat eating, and are therefore arguably as 'natural'--and yet we don't invoke the history of these acts as justification for them. As with other acts of violence, when it comes to eating meat, we must differentiate between natural and justifiable.

Most people in the world are sacrificing their souls to the devil. Remember, any good or gold achieved by the devil and his followers has no moral and righteous tale to tell and it's always tragedy at the end. Therefore, seek the Lord and stay on the right lane. It will never seize your internal peace and quest to achieve great things.

Mr. Lilly, on the other hand, is not selling me a product I can use. He is selling a fancy new thing called a methodology. You know what a methodology is? It's a painted box filled with nothing except my own desires for a more profitable company. He is looking to take a percentage of the transaction between me and my own soul without creating any value. This is a very old trick that's been going on since religion began. It is without ethics and it distinguishes me from Mr. Lilly.

Musonius ordered a thousand sesterces to be given to a man pretending to be a philosopher, when several people told him the man was a bad and vicious fellow, deserving of nothing good, Musonius answered with a smile, 'Well then he deserves money'.

My blood was boiling, which is not a good thing for a coldblood. Dracula was dead. Rex was dying or dead. Breakfast was dying. And I was caring about it all. Meanwhile, that blasted Gunnar did nothing but sit and stare at his teevee all day. He was the reason we were all here, the reason we were suffering and dying, and he barely noticed us. I hissed so hard it hurt.

My own concern is primarily the terror and violence carried out by my own state, for two reasons. For one thing, because it happens to be the larger component of international violence. But also for a much more important reason than that; namely, I can do something about it. So even if the U.S. was responsible for 2 percent of the violence in the world instead of the majority of it, it would be that 2 percent I would be primarily responsible for. And that is a simple ethical judgment. That is, the ethical value of one's actions depends on their anticipated and predictable consequences. It is very easy to denounce the atrocities of someone else. That has about as much ethical value as denouncing atrocities that took place in the 18th century.

My paper was a direct discussion and comparison of half-a-dozen ethical systems, concentrating on what seemed to me to be their flaws. I finished by saying that it struck me that all the ethical systems I was discussing were after the fact. That is, that people act as they are disposed to, but they like to feel afterwards that they were *right* and so they invent systems that approve of their dispositions

My reason to live is to love, my reason to get is to give. - The Lord is my witness.

My view [is] that what morality boils down to is, 'Don’t harm, and do help.' And now the question is, 'Can creatures like chickens and cows be harmed?' And the answer is, 'Of course they can.' Consequently, I think it’s immoral to harm them. And that seems to me to provide a very strong moral reason to be vegetarian, to not wear leather... it seems to me that our treatment of animals is morally appalling... and that we ought to radically revise the way we live, precisely because they feel pain, they can be hurt, and we’re constantly hurting these creatures!

My suggestion, then, is that we accord the fetus no higher moral status than we give to a nonhuman animal at a similar level of rationality, self-consciousness, awareness, capacity to feel and so on. Because no fetus is a person, no fetus has the same claim to life as a person. Until a fetus has some capacity for conscious experience, an abortion terminates an existence that is – considered as it is and not in terms of its potential – more like that of a plant than of a sentient animal like a dog or a cow.

Nathan seemed to have absorbed his sense of journalistic ethics from old movies about newspaper reporters. For Naomi, internet sampling ad scratching was a completely valid form of journalism, presenting no ethical clouds on its open-source horizon.

Narrative is an open-ended invitation to ethical and poetical responsiveness. Storytelling invites us to become not just agents of our own lives, but narrators and readers as well. It shows us that the untold life is not worth living. There will always be someone there to say, 'tell me a story', and someone there to respond. Were this not so, we would no longer be fully human.

Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure. It is for them alone to point out what we ought to do, as well as to determine what we shall do. On the one hand the standard of right and wrong, on the other the chain of causes and effects, are fastened to their throne. They govern us in all we do, in all we say, in all we think: every effort we can make to throw off our subjection, will serve but to demonstrate and confirm it. In words a man may pretend to abjure their empire: but in reality he will remain subject to it all the while. The principle of utility recognizes this subjection, and assumes it for the foundation of that system, the object of which is to rear the fabric of felicity by the hands of reason and of law. Systems which attempt to question it, deal in sounds instead of sense, in caprice instead of reason, in darkness instead of light.

Netiquette: The social code of network communication. Internet code of conduct based on the Golden Rule. Ethical philosophy of common rules.

Nevertheless, the Holy Spirit brings peace to your mind and heart as you uncover and make the right choice and align yourself with professional, ethical standards.

No ethical person wants to be a king or a queen, because there is no ethics and honor in putting yourself in a place higher than others!

Never underestimate the power of a tweet.

No doubt we instinctively prefer to help those who are close to us. Few could stand by and watch a child drown; many can ignore the avoidable deaths of children in Africa or India. The question, however, is not what we usually do, but what we ought to do, and it is difficult to see any sound moral justification for the view that distance, or community membership, makes a crucial difference to our obligations.

No more semblance or disemblance, no more God or Man, only an immanent logic of the principle of operativity.

No matter where we believe these beliefs and ideas came from, it is essential that we internalize a sense of ethics as it helps us decide the right course of action.

No society can be simultaneously fair, free, and equal. If it is fair, people who work harder can accumulate more. If it is free, people will give their wealth to their children. But then it cannot be equal, for some people will inherit wealth they did not earn.

Nor is he liberal who gives with pain; for he would prefer the wealth to the noble act, and this is not characteristic of a liberal man. But no more will the liberal man take from wrong sources; for such taking is not characteristic of the man who sets no store by wealth.

No one is without Christianity, if we agree on what we mean by the word. It is every individual's individual code of behavior, by means of which he makes himself a better human being than his nature wants to be, if he followed his nature only. Whatever its symbol—cross or crescent or whatever—that symbol is man's reminder of his duty inside the human race. Its various allegories are the charts against which he measures himself and learns to know what he is. It cannot teach man to be good as the textbook teaches him mathematics. It shows him how to discover himself, evolve for himself a moral code and standard within his capacities and aspirations, by giving him a matchless example of suffering and sacrifice and the promise of hope.

Not all minds can easily involve science. Most of what you can find inside various minds have no or weak connection with science; they are just values. If your mind takes any idea for guaranteed before its empirical investigation, or if you cannot criticize or make any assumption that your hypothesis related to it can be false, as well as true, it means you don’t do science but rather share some ideological, historical, religious or ethical values. No politics, ethics, history, religion can be a science in the strict sense of the term. All of them engage in the manipulation of brains in different ways. That is why any strong political, ethical, historical, religious bias would make your alleged ‘scientific mind’ weak. It is true that not all questions can be answered using scientific approaches, however, the formation of values inside your mind should substantially be up to you — be dependent on your critical thinking and sense of doubt, but should not be absorbed by various political, ethical, historical, religious doctrines in ready-form.

Nothing forbids man to enjoy himself, save grim and gloomy superstition

No, this isn't right. I don't think the people doing it know or care about right and wrong. This is all some kind of show, but I don't understand it either.

Nothing is right or wrong. It's all an interpretation of which lens we are looking through.

Not only a pregnant woman is an outrage toward ethics but also an attack on aesthetics. Motherhood degrades women, it turns them into cows. With the forgiveness of cows, my sisters.

Not only to myself or before the mirror or at the hour of my death, which I hope will be long in coming, but in the presence of my children and my wife and in the face of the peaceful life I’m building, I must acknowledge: (1) That under Stalin I wouldn’t have wasted my youth in the gulag or ended up with a bullet in the back of my head. (2) That in the McCarthy era I wouldn’t have lost my job or had to pump gas at a gas station. (3) That under Hitler, however, I would have been one of those who chose the path of exile, and that under Franco I wouldn’t have composed sonnets to the caudillo or the Holy Virgin like so many lifelong democrats. One thing is as true as the other. My bravery has its limits, certainly, but so does what I’m willing to swallow. Everything that begins as comedy ends as tragicomedy.

Not until "human nature" itself progresses morally will the majority of people prefer peaceful and boring market relations to the violent and exciting relations between coercer and coerced, predator and victim.

Nowadays the job of the judge is not to do justice. The judge is more of a functionary . He's like a civil servant whose job is to interpret words written down by another branch of the government, whether those words are just or not.

Now here comes in the whole collapse and huge blunder of our age. We have mixed up two different things, two opposite things. Progress should mean that we are always changing the world to suit the vision. Progress does mean (just now) that we are always changing the vision. It should mean that we are slow but sure in bringing justice and mercy among men: it does mean that we are very swift in doubting the desirability of justice and mercy: a wild page from any Prussian sophist makes men doubt it. Progress should mean that we are always walking towards the New Jerusalem. It does mean that the New Jerusalem is always walking away from us. We are not altering the real to suit the ideal. We are altering the ideal: it is easier.

Not the last time in Western history, the revolutionaries armed themselves with a new religion to steel themselves for greater outrageous.

Now this was possible only by a man determining himself entirely *rationally* according to concepts, not according to changing impressions and moods. But as only the maxims of our conduct, not the consequences or circumstances, are in our power, to be capable of always remaining consistent we must take as our object only the maxims, not the consequences and circumstances, and thus the doctrine of virtue is again introduced.” —from_The World as Will and Representation_. Translated from the German by E. F. J. Paye in two volumes: volume I, p. 89

Now there is discoverable in man, Freewill. His actions are of moral value to him if they are undertaken upon his own initiative; not if they are undertaken under compulsion. Therefore the use of choice is necessary to human dignity. A man deprived of choice is by that the less a man, and this we all show through the repugnance excited in us by unauthorized restraint and subjection, through coercion rather than authority, to another’s will. We cannot do good, or even evil, unless we do it freely; and if we admit the idea of good at all in human society, freedom must be its accompaniment.

Now to exert oneself and work for the sake of amusement seems silly and utterly childish. But to amuse oneself in order that one may exert oneself, as Anacharsis puts it, seems right; for amusement is a sort of relaxation, and we need relaxation because we cannot work continuously. Relaxation, then, is not an end; for it is taken for the sake of activity.

Obey moral, ethics, rules… THE SHORT STORY GOES AS FAR NOTHING LEFT TO BE SAID!

Observe the difference between your attitude to illusions and mine. You have to defend the religious illusion with all your might. If it becomes discredited - and indeed the threat to it is great enough - then your world collapses. There is nothing left for you but to despair of everything, of civilization and the future of mankind. From that bondage I am, we are, free. Since we are prepared to renounce a good part of our infantile wishes, we can bear it if a few of our expectations turn out to be illusions.

Once you believe that god is not a private property of anybody, you are on your way to becoming a new messiah. Maybe your own if not the world's

Of one thing I am certain: No single people, tradition, religion, governmental form, ethical program, moral code, or civilization has had sufficient wisdom and goodness to set the pattern and govern he world in the was of peace, decency and mutual respect. I do not believe God ever intended it to be that way. He wants us to reach out and learn from the wisdom he has given to humanity over broad sweeps of time and place and personality.

Oh, you humans may prefer empathy and mercy, but that's like intuiting the answer to an equation: you still have to go back and work the problem to be certain you were right. We can come to genuinely moral conclusions by our own paths.

Once you come to terms with why you don't eat cats, dogs, monkeys, and dolphins, you will begin to understand why I don't eat cows, pigs, chickens, and lambs.

One can with but moderate possessions do what one ought.

One’s email address serves as an identity online and speaks volumes about a person; it may be telling potential clients, partners or employers a whole lot about you: to be hired or fired. Unfortunately most send negative signals, indicating that: you are not a serious person - you are immature - Unprofessional, - Uncouth. etc. Take a look at your email address again today, get professional, be ethical, respectful, be admirable

One might say that there is an "ethics barrier " a speed above which ethics can no longer exit. After that point the only remaining goal is to survive the immediate moment.

One needs to be either more brave or more good, because if courage is lacking goodness can substitute, while cowardice is the deficiency of both.

One of the things about Ike that makes him so indisputably a hero is that he doesn't leave his own contradictions to the effete disputations of armchair scholars. He grapples with them himself, in his own lifetime.

One peculiarity of our present [ethical] climate is that we care much more about our rights than about our 'good'. For previous thinkers about ethics, such as those who wrote the Upanishads, or Confucius, or Plato, or the founders of the Christian tradition, the central concern was the state of one's soul, meaning some personal state of justice or harmony. Such a state might include resignation or renunciation, or detachment, or obedience, or knowledge, especially self-knowledge. For Plato there could be no just political order except one populated by just citizens.... Today we tend not to believe that; we tend to think that modern constitutional democracies are fine regardless of the private vices of those within them. We are much more nervous talking about our good: it seems moralistic, or undemocratic, or elitist. Similarly, we are nervous talking about duty. The Victorian ideal of a life devoted to duty, or a calling, is substantially lost to us. So a greater proportion of our moral energy goes to protecting claims against each other, and that includes protecting the state of our soul as purely private, purely our own business.

One thing, Ms. Gray, is forgotten by this tragedy: the embryo is human, not a nonhuman as the Supreme Court declared. Abortion never was about the poor or about women’s rights. It’s an ideology with an agenda—and it’s a profitable business. So, Ms. Gray, I dare say few politicians will speak that truth for fear of political reprisals. I’m not afraid. Politicians and courts made legal what is a morally reprehensible act of brutality. I call it what it is: judicial tyranny.