Ethicist Quotes & Sayings

Show me the man who keeps his house in hand, He's fit for public authority. — Sophocles

Niebuhr [Oden's Doctoral adviser at Yale and leading 20th century Christian theological ethicist] wanted all of his graduate students to have some serious interdisciplinary competence beyond theology, so I chose to be responsible for the area of psychology of religion. I hoped to correlate aspects of contemporary psychotherapies with a philosophy of universal history. The psychology that prevailed in my college years was predominately Freudian psychoanalysis, but my clinical beginning point in the late 1950's had turned to Rogerian client-centered therapy. The psychology that prevailed in my Yale years was predominantly the empirical social psychologists like Kurt Lewin and Musafer Sherif. I gradually assimilated those views in order to work on a critique of therapies and assess them all in relation to my major interest in the meaning of history. — Thomas C. Oden

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

An ethicist is someone who sees something wrong with whatever you have in mind. — Marvin Minsky

A Medical Affair is more than compelling fiction. It also is a powerful narrative about how relationships between physicians and patients can evolve in unethical, even unlawful ways. And as a medical ethicist and educator, I was delighted to see Strauss deftly weave important information about sexual misconduct by physicians into her story line."
David Orentlicher
Professor of law, medicine and ethics at Indiana University. Oversaw drafting of American Medical Association's ethical guidelines on intimate relationships between physicians and their patients — Anne McCarthy Strauss

Intellectualism' is the belief that our mind comes upon a world complete in itself, and has the duty of ascertaining its contents; but has no power of re-determining its character, for that is already given. — William James

I lead a very boring life. — Catherine McCormack

Is it a good hot dog? That's all I want to know ... I don't think the personal health and purity of my colon is that important compared to pleasure. As a chef, I'm not your dietitian or your ethicist. I'm in the pleasure business ... . My responsibility is to give you the most delicious tomato that I can afford, given the circumstances, and maybe increase the likelihood that you get laid after dinner. — Anthony Bourdain

The Princeton ethicist Peter Singer has espoused the right of women to choose abortion through to the end of pregnancy and to commit infanticide on newborns if they so choose. He has defended this position with the utilitarian argument that most women who eliminate an unwanted child will produce a wanted one, and that the loss of happiness of the child who is killed is outweighed by the happiness of the healthy child who follows. 1zAlthough Singer's position is extreme, it reflects the pervasive devaluation of people with Down's syndrome and the assumption that their lives are displeasing to others and themselves. — Andrew Solomon

Nothing is my guiltiest pleasure. I love it. I love doing it. I love planning to do it, I love loafing and pottering and chilling and daydreaming. — David Morrissey

For a man who purports to have learned of media ethics only this month, Mr. Williams has spent an undue amount of time appearing as a media ethicist on both CNN and the cable news networks of NBC. — Frank Rich

Irony is the cultivation of the spirit and therefore follows next after immediacy; then comes the ethicist, then the humourist, then the religious person. — Soren Kierkegaard

Seemingly by design, the American legal system encourages defense counsel to be as mendacious as possible. As Monroe Freedman, a legal ethicist and former dean of Hofstra Law School, has written, "The attorney is obligated to attack, if he can, the reliability or credibility of an opposing witness whom he knows to be truthful." It's an essential component of our adversarial system of justice, based on the theory that justice is best achieved not through a third-party investigation directed by an impartial judge but, instead, through vigorous disputation by the interested parties: trial by verbal combat. The — Jon Krakauer

It could be anything. It could be Jesus and it could be the Furby and it could be the lint that lives in my navel, but it's probably not. Whatever it is, I doubt we as humans on Earth could have any perception of it while we're here. So, why give yourself a headache thinking about it. Just be a good person. That's what an ethicist is. — Bill Maher

As a chef I'm not your dietitian or your ethicist, I'm in the pleasure business. — Anthony Bourdain

Our job is to find a few intelligent things to do, not to keep up with every damn thing in the world. — Charlie Munger

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

Painting, art in general, enchants me. It is my life. What else matters? When you put all your soul into a work, all that is noble in you, you cannot fail to find a kindred soul who understands you, and you do not need a host of such spirits. Is not that all an artist should wish for? — Camille Pissarro

An artist owed a duty to nothing except his own irresponsibility. It was OK for an artist to frolic in the water, no matter how bloody the waves or how high the tide rose. An ethicist had an obligation to drown. — Howard Jacobson

Quote me as saying I was mis-quoted. — Groucho Marx

Love is not fashionable anymore; the poets have killed it. — Oscar Wilde