Quotes & Sayings About Ethics

The work of art is the object seen sub specie aeternitatis; and the good life is the world seen sub specie aeternitatis. This is the connection between art and ethics.
The usual way of looking at things sees objects as it were from the midst of them, the view sub specie aeternitatis from outside.
In such a way that they have the whole world as background. — Ludwig Wittgenstein

A singular confusion exists about the notions of 'culture' and 'civilization'.
Culture began with the 'prologue in heaven.' With its religion, art, ethics, and philosophy, it will always be dealing with man's relation to that heaven from whence he came. Everything within culture means a confirmation or a rejection, a doubt or a reminiscence of the heavenly origin of man. Culture is characterized by this enigma and goes on through all time with the steady striving to solve it.
On the other hand, civilization is a continuation of the zoological, one-dimensional life, the material exchange between man and nature. This aspect of life differs from other animals' lives, but only in its degree, level, and organization. Here, one does not find man embarrassed by evangelical, Hamletian, or Karamasovian problems. The anonymous member of society functions here only by adopting the goods nature and changing the world by his work according to his needs. — Alija Izetbegovic

I think moralistic science is bad for morals and bad for science. — Steven Pinker

Philosophy has been described as thinking about thinking, and all Christians should do that. The term comes from two Greek words, philia ("love") and sophia ("wisdom"), thus "loving wisdom." Nothing anti-Christian appears in that definition. Problems arise if we seek wisdom apart from God, or elevate human reason above Him, but according to Proverbs 4:5-7, God's people should love and seek wisdom.
Formal philosophy is divided into three major areas-incidentally, all core Christian issues: (1) Metaphysics,
which asks questions about the nature of reality: "What is real?" "Is the basic essence of the world matter, or spirit, or something else?" (2) Epistemology, which addresses issues concerning truth and knowledge: "What do we know?" "How do we know it?" "Why do we think it's true?" (3) Ethics, which considers moral problems: "What is right and wrong?" "Are moral values absolute or relative?" "What is the good life, and how do we achieve it? — Rick Cornish

Once one concedes that a single world government is not necessary, then where does one logically stop at the permissibility of separate states? If Canada and the United States can be separate nations without being denounced as in a state of impermissible 'anarchy', why may not the South secede from the United States? New York State from the Union? New York City from the state? Why may not Manhattan secede? Each neighbourhood? Each block? Each house? Each person? — Murray N. Rothbard

The only ideological or political factions that have made any attempt at an ethics consistent with Darwinian science, to this point at least, have been the socialist eugenics movement of the early twentieth century and the Nazi movement that sprang from it. Obviously, — David Bentley Hart

Good, capable individuals unconsciously and consciously guard and nurture themselves and their spirits every day in all sorts of choices, large and small. Just as their lives are never static, they are rarely if ever fractured. Their morals and ethics are never cut off from the whole of their evolving beings. — Donald Van De Mark

Ethics must begin at the top of an organization. It is a leadership issue and the chief executive must set the example. — Edward F. Hennessey

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

Political parties has nothing to do with religious problems, as long as these are not alien to the nation, undermining the morals and ethics of the race; just as religion cannot be amalgamated with the scheming of political parties. — Adolf Hitler

Given our obsession with self, it is hardly surprising we think it is fine for us to live in a world with malleable moral markers, as long as we get our own way without being bullied by others into accepting their way of doing things. We want others to respect moral boundaries that we want to be free to ignore when it suits. — Stephen McAndrew

The widespread assumption that ethical behavior takes the fun out of life is false. In actuality, living ethically ensures that relationships in our lives, including encounters with strangers, nurture our spiritual growth. — Bell Hooks

Everybody has questioned my heart, questioned my training ethics, this and that, but I never did something as cowardly as to take any sports-enhancement drug ... That's one thing no one can ever say about me, you know? That I was a coward and took sports-enhancement drugs, because I was afraid I was going to get my a** kicked in front of millions of people. So anybody out there who said I never had no heart, at least I wasn't a coward. — B.J. Penn

Is there Gawker ethics? I mean, I guess there's Gawker ethics. It's a dangerous thing to talk about. — Nick Denton

Thomas Hobbes's politics are fitted only to promote tyranny, and his ethics to encourage licentiousness. — David Hume

What a great pleasure to work for your living? — Lailah Gifty Akita

Good, then, is indefinable.... — G.E. Moore

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. — Neel Burton

Then, as we turned the final curve past the abandoned little hamlet of Ballydubh, with the village almost out of sight, he forced me to turn around and take in the full sweep of the mountains and the sea. "And there", he said, "is your An Clohan. You had best said good-bye, now. — Nancy Scheper-Hughes

His political and social speeches were cataracts of anecdotes and "loud laughter"; his bodily health was of a bursting sort; his ethics were all optimism; and he dealt with the Drink problem (his favourite topic) with that immortal or even monotonous gaiety which is so often a mark of the prosperous total abstainer. The established story of his conversion was familiar on the more puritanic platforms and pulpits, how he had been, when only a boy, drawn away from Scotch theology to Scotch whisky, and how he had risen out of both and become (as he modestly put it) what he was. Yet his wide white beard, cherubic face, and sparkling spectacles, at the numberless dinners and congresses where they appeared, made it hard to believe, somehow, that he had ever been anything so morbid as either a dram-drinker or a Calvinist. He was, one felt, the most seriously merry of all the sons of men. — Wilkie Collins

Our identities have no bodies, so, unlike you, we cannot obtain order by physical coercion. We believe that from ethics, enlightened self-interest, and the commonweal, our governance will emerge. — John Perry Barlow

The sign of a good conscience is for a man to be in support of basically everything that Westboro Baptist isn't. — Luke Myer

I will never sacrifice my morals and ethics for anyone or any win. — Mike Candrea

I am closer to a European viewpoint of the world than an American one. My ethics and ideals are based on European concepts. — Bianca Jagger

Timeless principles never age, and truth is as young as the day it was spoken into existence. — Craig D. Lounsbrough

Compulsion precedes morality, indeed morality itself is compulsion for a time, to which one submits for the avoidance of pain. — Friedrich Nietzsche

Wrong is wrong only when you are at liberty to choose. — Rabindranath Tagore

While religion is ethical, it by no means follows that ethics is religion. — Georgia Harkness

But what they find most amazing and despicable is the insanity of those who all but worship the rich, to whom they owe nothing and who can do them no harm; they do so for no other reason except that they are rich, knowing full well that they are so mean and tightfisted that they will certainly never give them one red cent during their whole lives. — Thomas More

The unhappy theory of business ethics is this: you have a fiduciary responsibility to maximize profit. Period. To do anything other than that is to cheat your investors. And in a competitive world, you don't have much wiggle room here. — Seth Godin

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

Life cannot find reasons to sustain it, cannot be a source of decent mutual regard, unless each of us resolves to breathe such qualities into it. — Frank Herbert

It is a tragicomic fact that our proper upbringing has become an ally of the secret police. ( ... ) The "Tell the truth!" imperative drummed into us so automatically that we feel ashamed of lying even to a secret policeman. — Milan Kundera

The deity who stalked the deserts of the Middle East millennia ago-and who seems to have abandoned them to bloodshed in his name ever since-is no one to consult on questions of ethics. — Sam Harris

There is no check-box for ethical leadership.
It is an ongoing individual and organizational journey.
We will never know everything that there is to know. — Linda Fisher Thornton

Since science's competence extends to observable and measurable phenomena, not to the inner being of things, and to the means, not to the ends of human life, it would be nonsense to expect that the progress of science will provide men with a new type of metaphysics, ethics, or religion. — Jacques Maritain

Peace is never long preserved by weight of metal or by an armament race. Peace can be made tranquil and secure only by understanding and agreement fortified by sanctions. We must embrace international cooperation or international disintegration. Science has taught us how to put the atom to work. But to make it work for good instead of for evil lies in the domain dealing with the principles of human dignity. We are now facing a problem more of ethics than of physics. — Bernard Baruch

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

To many people virtue consists chiefly in repenting faults, not in avoiding them. — Georg C. Lichtenberg

The merely conscious being does not have a preference for continued life. Perhaps while having a pleasurable experience it has a preference for that experience to continue, or while having a painful experience it has a preference for that experience to end, but it will not have any preferences for the long-term future, and the desires it has do not survive periods of sleep or temporary unconsciousness, because unlike a self-aware being, it has no conception of its own future existence after a period of sleep. Thus if we are concerned only about the thwarting of preferences, for a merely conscious being, painless killing and administering an anesthetic seem to be equivalent. Killing does not thwart any more desires than putting the being to sleep. The being will be able to continue to satisfy its preferences after it awakes, but from the being's subjective perspective it is as if a new being, with new preferences, came into existence. — Peter Singer

I suppose the most important thing, the heaviest single factor in one's life, is whether one's born male or female. In most societies it determines one's expectations, activities, outlook, ethics, manners - almost everything. Vocabulary. Semiotic usages. Clothing. Even food. Women ... women tend to eat less ... It's extremely hard to separate the innate differences from the learned ones. Even where women participate equally with men in the society, they still after all do all the childbearing, and so most of the child-rearing ... — Ursula K. Le Guin

In a city where men are killing each other like animals just to make it a happier place, who has the right to stop me from killing myself? — Orhan Pamuk

Divine permission, given to people who think they have god on their side, enables actions that a morally normal unbeliever would not contemplate. — Christopher Hitchens

The principle that the end justifies the means is and remains the only rule of political ethics; anything else is just a vague chatter and melts away between one's fingers. — Arthur Koestler

Human dignity can be achieved only in the field of ethics, and ethical achievement is measured by the degree in which our actions are governed by compassion and love, not by greed and aggressiveness. — Arnold J. Toynbee

But when our elected officials and our political campaign become entirely untethered to reason and facts and analysis, when it doesn't matter what's true and what's not, that makes it all but impossible for us to make good decisions on behalf of future generations. It threatens the values of respect and tolerance that we teach our children and that are the source of America's strength. It frays the habits of the heart that underpin any civilized society -- because how we operate is not just based on laws, it's based on habits and customs and restraint and respect. — President Barack Obama

Memory relates to ethics as well as to spirituality (the distinction between ethics and spirituality is a Western one and does more harm than good). Memory places obligations upon you. The Israelites were to remember their experience of servitude in Egypt, and treat their servants accordingly. — John E. Goldingay

Football, that's just athletics. But in the business world - doing everything - people are competing. So you need good work ethics, and I think it helped me to develop good work ethics, being in a small town. — Herschel Walker

To a thrifty theologian, bent on redemption with economy, there are few points of ethics too fine-spun for splitting. — Ellen Glasgow

A salesperson's ethics and values contribute more to sales success than do techniques or strategies. — Ron Willingham

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

A business is seldom if ever built up except on lines of strictest integrity. — Andrew Carnegie

He believed that every individual was responsible for his conduct on earth, that there was a judge within. Could even a blazingly Christ inflict greater retribution? Could Dante's Charon in his rowboat on the river Acheron whip the miscreants into a deeper, more everlasting hell than man's unvarnished verdict of himself? — Irving Stone

I used to think the most important thing for a reporter was to be where the news is and be the first to know. Now I feel a reporter should be able to effect change. Your reporting should move people and motivate people to change the world. Maybe this is too idealistic. Young people who want to be journalists must, first, study and, second, recognize that they should never be the heroes of the story..A journalist must be curious, and must be humble.
Zhou Yijun — Judy Polumbaum

Markets cannot meet the needs of the very poor. The desperately poor are not consumers who will create an immediate profit. — Jeffrey D. Sachs

Sorting out what's good and bad is the province of ethics. It is also what keeps priests, pundits, and parents busy. Unfortunately, what keeps children and philosophers busy is asking the priests, pundits and parents, Why? — Thomas Cathcart

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. — J.Z. Colby

What if our better nature wasn't better after all? But was instead, well, just nature? — Kevin Dutton

My paternal grandfather Rustom Mehta had a huge influence on me because of his ethics and his values. — Zarin Mehta

Enough of medical ethics. Let Uncle
Hippocrates rest in peace. It's time to send an S.O.S to Uncle Omar Khayyam instead. — Anurag Shourie

Ethics and Equity are at the core of debate of climate change. Debate has to move from Climate Change to Climate Justice. — Narendra Modi

Principles are only tools in the hands of God; they will soon be thrown away when they are no longer useful. — Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Common sense doesn't have the last word in ethics or anywhere else, but it has, as J. L. Austin said about ordinary language, the first word: it should be examined before it is discarded. — Thomas Nagel

You're born with intelligence, but not with ethics. — Massad Ayoob

We keep on being told that religion, whatever its imperfections, at least instills morality. On every side, there is conclusive evidence that the contrary is the case and that faith causes people to be more mean, more selfish, and perhaps above all, more stupid. — Christopher Hitchens

Man is not a solitary animal, and so long as social Life survives, self-realization cannot be the supreme principle of ethics. — Bertrand Russell

In quixotically trying to conquer death doctors all too frequently do no good for their patients' "ease" but at the same time they do harm instead by prolonguing and even magnifying patients' dis-ease. — Jack Kevorkian

An open mind, in questions that are not ultimate, is useful. But an open mind about the ultimate foundations either of Theoretical or of Practical Reason is idiocy. If a man's mind is open on these things, let his mouth at least be shut. He can say nothing to the purpose. Outside the Tao there is no ground for criticizing either the Tao or anything else. — C.S. Lewis

With its continued dismissal of the law of God in ethics, Fundamentalism expressed both a "spiritualized" form of situational ethics and a "Christianly submissive" statism. — Greg L. Bahnsen

In civilized life, law floats in a sea of ethics. — Earl Warren

Long regarded as central to the contemporary understanding of medical ethics are four principles that must be satisfied in order to fulfill the requirements of moral decision-making. These principles are autonomy, justice, beneficence, and non-maleficence. — Sherwin B. Nuland

I take no pleasure in seeing DeLay swing gently in the wind. But the thing I believe in the most is ethics. If someone has lost his moral compass and has to go to jail to find it, then I believe it will make him a much better person. — Tom DeLay

Don't tell ever "Only I can do that work", tell always "I can do that work also — Chiranjit Paul

The limitation of the ethical phenomenon to its place and time does not imply its rejection but, on the contrary, its validation. One does not use canons to shoot sparrows. — Dietrich Bonhoeffer

The New Age movement, for all the validity of its protest and the value of some of its recommendations, is in truth a very old blind alley. There is a very long history to remind us of what happens when nature is our ultimate point of reference ... Nature knows no ethics. There is no right and wrong in nature; the controlling realities are power and fertility. — Lesslie Newbigin

The problem I want to talk to you about tonight is the problem of belief. What does it mean to believe? We use this word all the time, and I think behind it lurk some really extraordinary taboos and confusions. What I want to argue tonight is that how we talk about belief- how we fail to criticize or criticize the beliefs of others, has more importance to us personally, more consequence to us personally and to civilization than perhaps anything else that is in our power to influence. — Sam Harris

Cosmopolitanism seeks a _we_ that does not rely on the exclusion of _others_ but, instead, recognizes and confirms each other as part of the planetary _we_. The cosmopolitan _we_ is not grounded in a monolithic sameness but in a constant alterity and _ethical singularity_ of each individual human person regardless of one's national origin and belonging, religious affiliation, gender, race and ethnicity, class ability, or sexuality. — Namsoon Kang

When we focus on winning the battle for material gains,we end up losing spiritual war.If we had a better self of ethics we would be better prepared to deal with the complicated world in which we find ourselves. — David V. Gaggin

Science enables humans to satisfy their needs. It does nothing to change them. They are no different today from what they have always been. There is progress in knowledge, but not in ethics. This s the verdict both of science and history, and the view of every one of the world's religions. — John Gray

I think I take what you might call a B-movie story, deal with B-movie subjects, and I treat it as if it's an A-movie in terms of my approach, my crew, my actors, my ethics and so on. I guess that's my trademark or one of them, anyway! — M. Night Shyamalan

If you deny that any principles of conduct at all are common to and admitted by all men who try to behave reasonably - well, I don't see how you can have any ethics or any ethical background for law. — Frederick Pollock

He who is conversant with the supernal powers will not worship these inferior deities of the wind, waves, tide, and sunshine. Butwe would not disparage the importance of such calculations as we have described. They are truths in physics because they are true in ethics. — Henry David Thoreau

SEN. McCARTHY: You will teach morality, ethics, and good house-keeping to these 48 states, and to the world. By order of this committee, June Cleaver, you will be a beacon! You will sire the future and teach it what we tell you to teach it! Echo effect, echo effect, echo effect ... — Benjamin R. Smith

Anyone can become angry - that is easy. But to be angry with the right person, to the right degree, at the right time, for the right purpose, and in the right way - this is not easy. ARISTOTLE, The Nicomachean Ethics — Daniel Goleman

High ethics and religious principles form the basis for success and happiness in every area of life. — John Templeton

Deism" in its own day referred not to a superficial theological doctrine but to a comprehensive intellectual tradition that ranged freely across the terrain we now associate with ethics, political theory, metaphysics, the philosophy of mind, and epistemology. It was an astonishingly coherent and systematic body of thought, closer to a way of being than any particular dogma, and it retained its essential elements over a span of centuries, not decades. In origin and substance, deism was neither British nor Christian, as the conventional view supposes, but largely ancient, pagan, and continental, and it spread in America far beyond the educated elite. — Matthew Stewart

Where are the ethical concerns, that so many people called animal lovers invoke, when you steal the children of wild dog mothers and other family members from right before their eyes? Do ethics always refer only to what people think appropriate for purely subjective reasons?
Ultimately, our long-term research resulted in a very sad picture: With the exception of the random puppy, who today as an adult actually is interested in people, neither male Maccia nor the most of the other "rescued" dogs are socially and environmentally secure, but had remained shy and partly vegetate in kennels with empty eyes. Such dogs are neither fish nor fowl, although taken from the wild population in the early age of about eight to twelve weeks (except Maccia, whom Funny "rescued" at the age of four months, which is even more irresponsible). — Gunther Bloch

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

The Christian coach keeps ethics in perspective by aligning his principles and values with his biblical worldview, endeavoring to see things from God's point of view. — Michael J. Marx

We ought always to deal justly, not only with those who are just to us, but likewise to those who endeavor to injure us; and this, for fear lest by rendering them evil for evil, we should fall into the same vice. — Hierocles

Failure to summon forth the courage to risk a nondogmatic and nonevasive stance on such crucial existential matters can also blur our ethical vision. If our actions in the world are to stem from an encounter with what is central in life, they must be unclouded by either dogma or prevarication. Agnosticism is no excuse for indecision. If anything, it is a catalyst for action; for in shifting concern away from a future life and back to the present, it demands an ethics of empathy rather than a metaphysics of fear and hope. — Stephen Batchelor

This is the first time I have heard 'ethics' in the mouth of a man. You and I are the only men on this ship that know its meaning. At one time in my life, I dreamed that I might someday talk with men who used such language, that I might lift myself out of the place in life in which I had been born, and hold conversation and mingle with men who talked about just such things as ethics. — Jack London

Where no guiding ideals are left to point the way, the scale of values disappears and with it the meaning of our deeds and sufferings, and at the end can lie only negation and despair. Religion is therefore the foundation of ethics, and ethics the presupposition of life. — Werner Heisenberg

Ethics or simple honesty is the building blocks upon which our whole society is based, and business is a part of our society, and it's integral to the practice of being able to conduct business, that you have a set of honest standards. — Kerry Stokes

The word "rights", is something that governments need to provide you and protect you from but, the governments are the basic violators of all human rights. — Stefan Molyneux

In April, I asked my staff to determine if Senate rules and relevant laws would allow me to direct the trustees to sell any remaining HCA stock. In May, my staff worked with outside counsel and with the Senate ethics committee staff to draft a written communication to the trustees. After obtaining pre-approval by mid-June from the Senate ethics committee, I issued a letter directing my trustees to sell any remaining HCA stock in my family's trust. — Bill Frist

Einstein himself said, You can speak of the ethical foundations of science, but you cannot speak of the scientific foundations of ethics. — Eric Metaxas

We love dogs and eat cows not because dogs and cows are fundamentally different
cows, like dogs, have feelings, preferences, and consciousness
but because our perception of them is different. — Melanie Joy

It is a self-deception of philosophers and moralists to imagine that they escape decadence by opposing it. That is beyond their will; and, however little they acknowledge it, one later discovers that they were among the most powerful promoters of decadence. — Friedrich Nietzsche

It [an ethical problem with in vitro fertilization] depends on whether you're talking ethics from the standpoint of some religious denomination or from just truly religious people. The Jewish or Catholic faiths, for example, have their own rules. But just religious people, who will make very devoted parents, have no problem with in vitro fertilization. — Patrick Steptoe