Ethics Quotes / Quotations 

Famous Quotes and Quotations about Ethics

Ethics Quotes 1-41 out of 41
   
It makes no difference whether a good man has defrauded a bad man, or a bad man defrauded a good man, or whether a good or bad man has committed adultery: the law can look only to the amount of damage done.
more Aristotle quotes
Men regard it as their right to return evil for evil -- and if they cannot, feel they have lost their liberty.
more Aristotle quotes
Collectivism is the political theory that states that the will of the people is omnipotent, an individual must obey; that society as a whole, not the individual, is the unit of moral value. ... Collectivism is the application of the altruist ethics to politics.
more Andrew Bernstein quotes
The hardest tumble a man can make is to fall over his own bluff.
more Ambrose Bierce quotes
Among the religions in this country which do not teach what would generally be considered a belief in the existence of God are Buddhism, Taoism, ethical culture, secular humanism and others.
more Justice Hugo L. Black quotes
... ours is a sick profession marked by incompetence, lack of training, misconduct and bad manners. Ineptness, bungling, malpractice, and bad ethics can be observed in court houses all over this country every day ... these incompetents have a seeming unawareness of the fundamental ethics of the profession. ... the harsh truth is that ... we may well be on our way to a society, overrun by hordes of lawyers, hungry as locusts, and brigades of judges in numbers never before contemplated.
more Justice Warren E. Burger quotes
The age of chivalry is gone. That of sophisters, economists and calculators has succeeded.
more Edmund Burke quotes
I feel obliged to withhold my approval of the plan to indulge in benevolent and charitable sentiment through the appropriation of public funds... I find no warrant for such an appropriation in the Constitution.
more Grover Cleveland quotes
Collectivist ethical principle: man is not an end to himself, but is only a tool to serve the ends of others. Whether those 'others' are a dictator's gang, the nation, society, the race, (the) god(s), the majority, the community, the tribe, etc., is irrelevant -- the point is that man in principle must be sacrificed to others.
more Mark Da Cunha quotes
Government schools can't teach reading, writing, and arithmetic -- why should we trust them to teach morality, respect, and character? If public education does for ethics what it's done for learning, we'll end up with a generation of immoral, disrespectful, and characterless students.
more Steve Dasbach quotes
I have never looked upon ease and happiness as ends in themselves - such an ethical basis I call more proper for a herd of swine.  The ideals which have lighted me on my way and time after time given me new courage to face life cheerfully, have been Truth, Goodness, and Beauty.
more Albert Einstein quotes
To be sure, the doctrine of a personal God interfering with natural events could never be refuted, in the real sense, by science, for this doctrine can always take refuge in those domains in which scientific knowledge has not yet been able to set foot. But I am persuaded that such behavior on the part of the representatives of religion would not only be unworthy but also fatal. For a doctrine which is able to maintain itself not in clear light, but only in the dark, will of necessity lose its effect on mankind, with incalculable harm to human progress.
more Albert Einstein quotes
Nothing astonishes men so much as common sense and plain dealing.
more Ralph Waldo Emerson quotes
The smallest act of kindness is worth more than the greatest intention.
more Khalil Gibran quotes
A truly great library contains something in it to offend everyone.
more Jo Godwin quotes
The principle that the end justifies the means is in individualist ethics regarded as the denial of all morals. In collectivist ethics it becomes necessarily the supreme rule.
more Friedrich August von Hayek quotes
You do not examine legislation in the light of the benefits it will convey if properly administered, but in the light of the wrongs it would do and the harm it would cause if improperly administered.
more Lyndon B. Johnson quotes
The true measure of a man is how he treats someone who can do him absolutely no good.
more Dr. Samuel Johnson quotes
To say "I have to" is to speak the language of compulsion, duty, authority -- the language of injunctions imposed on us from without. Objectivism is not a duty ethic, but an ethic of values, the ultimate value being one's own life and happiness. The language of values is "I want" and "I will": I want this, and I will do what it takes to get it.
more David Kelley quotes
Express everything you like. No word can hurt you. None. No idea can hurt you. Not being able to express an idea or word will hurt you more. Like a bullet.
more Jamaica Kincaid quotes
Communism, avowedly secularistic and materialistic, has no place for God. This I could never accept,… I strongly disagreed with Communism’s ethical relativism... there are no fixed, immutable principles; consequently, almost anything—force, violence, murder, lying—is a justifiable means to the ‘millennial’ end.
more Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. quotes
Altruism is a code of ethics which hold the welfare of others as the standard of 'good', and self-sacrifice as the only moral action. The unstated premise of the doctrine of altruism is that all relationships among men involve sacrifice. This leaves one with the false choice between maliciously exploiting the other person (forcing them to be sacrificed) or being 'moral' and offering oneself up as the sacrificial victim.
more Jeff Landauer quotes
You must study to be frank with the world: frankness is the child of honesty and courage. Say just what you mean to do on every occasion, and take it for granted that you mean to do right.
more Robert E. Lee quotes
The measure of a man's character is what he would do if he knew he never would be found out.
more Thomas Babington Macaulay quotes
The notion that a radical is one who hates his country is naive and usually idiotic. He is, more likely, one who likes his country more than the rest of us, and is thus more disturbed than the rest of us when he sees it debauched. He is not a bad citizen turning to crime; he is a good citizen driven to despair.
more H. L. Mencken quotes
When complaints are freely heard, deeply considered, and speedily reformed, then is the utmost bound of civil liberty obtained that wise men look for.
more John Milton quotes
None can love freedom but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license, which never hath more scope than under tyrants.
more John Milton quotes
If it would be wrong for the government to adopt an official religion, then, for the same reasons, it would be wrong for the government to adopt official education policies. The moral case for freedom of religion stands or falls with that for freedom of education. A society that champions freedom of religion but at the same time countenances state regulation of education has a great deal of explaining to do.
more James R. Otteson quotes
He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself.
more Thomas Paine quotes
Fascist ethics begin ... with the acknowledgment that it is not the individual who confers a meaning upon society, but it is, instead, the existence of a human society which determines the human character of the individual. According to Fascism, a true, a great spiritual life cannot take place unless the State has risen to a position of pre-eminence in the world of man. The curtailment of liberty thus becomes justified at once, and this need of rising the State to its rightful position.
more Mario Palmieri quotes
Over the 20th century, the federal government has assumed a vast and unprecedented set of powers. Not only has the exercise of those powers upset the balance between federal and state governments; run roughshod over individuals, families, and firms; and reduced economic opportunity for all; but most of what the federal government does today -- to put the point as plainly and candidly as possible -- is illegitimate because done without explicit constitutional authority. The time has come to start returning power to the states and the people, to relimit federal power in our fundamental law, to restore constitutional government.
more Roger Pilon quotes
To be able to think freely, a man must be certain that no consequence will follow whatever he writes.
more Ernest Renan quotes
I pray that no child of mine would ever descend into such a place as a library. They are indeed most dangerous places and unfortunate is she or he who is lured into such a hellhole of enjoyment, stimulus, facts, passion and fun.
more Willy Russell quotes
We can have justice whenever those who have not been injured by injustice are as outraged by it as those who have been.
more Solon quotes
A man’s liberties are none the less aggressed upon because those who coerce him do so in the belief that he will be benefited.
more Herbert Spencer quotes
Although the legal and ethical definitions of right are the antithesis of each other, most writers use them as synonyms.  They confuse power with goodness, and mistake law for justice.
more Charles T. Sprading quotes
If I want to be free from any other man’s dictation, I must understand that I can have no other man under my control.
more William Graham Sumner quotes
If I want to be free from any other man’s dictation, I must understand that I can have no other man under my control.
more William Graham Sumner quotes
It is morally as bad not to care whether a thing is true or not, so long as it makes you feel good, as it is not to care how you got your money as long as you have it.
more Edwin Way Teale quotes
The trouble with the rat race is that even if you win, you're still a rat.
more Lily Tomlin quotes
Let the laws be clear, uniform and precise; to interpret laws is almost always to corrupt them.
more Voltaire quotes
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