Ethics Quotes

Animals are more than ever a test of our character, of mankind's capacity for empathy and for decent, honorable conduct and faithful stewardship. We are called to treat them with kindness, not because they have rights or power or some claim to equality, but in a sense because they don't; because they all stand unequal and powerless before us.

~ Matthew Scully

You're trying to be tricky. What's morality?It's the difference between what's right and what you can rationalize.Must be a human thing.Exactly.

~ Christopher Moore

You still owe me a million dollars. I'd presented him with a bill for proving his innocence and getting him freed from prison. He had yet to pay. Couldn't imagine why.Yeah, I was hoping we could work that out.The interest alone is going to kill you.What do you charge?Three hundred eighty-seven percent.Is that ethical?It's as ethical as my dating the son of Satan.

~ Darynda Jones

Humans are the only animals that have children on purpose, keep in touch (or don't), care about birthdays, waste and lose time, brush their teeth, feel nostalgia, scrub stains, have religions and political parties and laws, wear keepsakes, apologize years after an offense, whisper, fear themselves, interpret dreams, hide their genitalia, shave, bury time capsules, and can choose not to eat something for reasons of conscience. The justifications for eating animals and for not eating them are often identical: we are not them.

~ Jonathan Safran Foer

You know yourself what you are worth in your own eyes; and at what price you will sell yourself. For men sell themselves at various prices. This is why, when Florus was deliberating whether he should appear at Nero's shows, taking part in the performance himself, Agrippinus replied, 'Appear by all means.' And when Florus inquired, 'But why do not you appear?' he answered, 'Because I do not even consider the question.' For the man who has once stooped to consider such questions, and to reckon up the value of external things, is not far from forgetting what manner of man he is.

~ Epictetus

The wise man does not expose himself needlessly to danger, since there are few things for which he cares sufficiently; but he is willing, in great crises, to give even his life--knowing that under certain conditions it is not worth while to live. He is of a disposition to do men service, though he is ashamed to have a service done to him. To confer a kindness is a mark of superiority; to receive one is a mark of subordination... He does not take part in public displays... He is open in his dislikes and preferences; he talks and acts frankly, because of his contempt for men and things... He is never fired with admiration, since there is nothing great in his eyes. He cannot live in complaisance with others, except it be a friend; complaisance is the characteristic of a slave... He never feels malice, and always forgets and passes over injuries... He is not fond of talking... It is no concern of his that he should be praised, or that others should be blamed. He does not speak evil of others, even of his enemies, unless it be to themselves. His carriage is sedate, his voice deep, his speech measured; he is not given to hurry, for he is concerned about only a few things; he is not prone to vehemence, for he thinks nothing very important. A shrill voice and hasty steps come to a man through care... He bears the accidents of life with dignity and grace, making the best of his circumstances, like a skillful general who marshals his limited forces with the strategy of war... He is his own best friend, and takes delight in privacy whereas the man of no virtue or ability is his own worst enemy, and is afraid of solitude.

~ Aristotle

In matters of conscience, the law of the majority has no place.

~ Mahatma Gandhi

If there were a party of those who aren't sure they're right, I'd belong t

~ Albert Camus

While we ourselves are the living graves of murdered beasts, how can we expect any ideal conditions on this earth?

~ George Bernard Shaw

Acting responsibly is not a matter of strengthening our reason but of deepening our feelings for the welfare of others.

~ Jostein Gaarder

Were the walls of our meat industry to become transparent, literally or even figuratively, we would not long continue to raise, kill, and eat animals the way we do.

~ Michael Pollan

There is one and only one social responsibility of business–to use it resources and engage in activities designed to increase its profits so long as it stays within the rules of the game, which is to say, engages in open and free competition without deception or fraud

~ Milton Friedman

I never knew a man who had better motives for all the trouble he caused.

~ Graham Greene

He was impregnably armored by his good intentions and his ignorance.

~ Graham Greene

Despite the fact that an Indonesian island chicken has probably had a much more natural life than one raised on a battery farm in England, people who wouldn't think twice about buying something oven-ready become much more upset about a chicken that they've been on a boat with, so there is probably buried in the Western psyche a deep taboo about eating anything you've been introduced to socially.

~ Douglas Adams

In the simple moral maxim the Marine Corps teaches — do the right thing, for the right reason — no exception exists that says: unless there's criticism or risk. Damn the consequences.

~ Josh Rushing

Whether a man is a criminal or a public servant is purely a matter of perspective.

~ Tom Robbins

In the common world of fact the wicked were not punished, nor the good rewarded. Success was given to the strong, failure thrust upon the weak. That was all.

~ Oscar Wilde

The function of education, therefore, is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically. But education which stops with efficiency may prove the greatest menace to society. The most dangerous criminal may be the man gifted with reason, but with no morals.

~ Martin Luther King Jr.

Observe how many people evade, rationalize and drive their minds into a state of blind stupor, in dread of discovering that those they deal with- their loved ones or friends or business associates or political rulers- are not merely mistaken, but evil. Observe that this dread leads them to sanction, to help and to spread the very evil whose existence they fear to acknowledge.

~ Ayn Rand

The thinking man 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, even the lowliest creature; but to do so is to renounce our manhood and shoulder a guilt which nothing justifies.

~ Albert Schweitzer

Good and evil both increase at compound interest.

~ C.s. Lewis

Disgust is so reassuring, it feels like a moral proof.

~ Jed Rubenfeld

Perhaps, indeed, there are no truly universal ethics: or to put it more precisely, the ways in which ethical principles are interpreted will inevitably differ across cultures and eras. Yet, these differences arise chiefly at the margins. All known societies embrace the virtues of truthfulness, integrity, loyalty, fairness; none explicitly endorse falsehood, dishonesty, disloyalty, gross inequity. (Five Minds for the Future, p136)

~ Howard Gardner

Moral crusaders with zeal but no ethical understanding are likely to give us solutions that are worse than the problems.

~ Charles W. Colson

Pleasure is Nature's test, her sign of approval.

~ Oscar Wilde

It may be considered folly by common opinion but this refusal to destroy life unnecessarily, this reverence for it, must become a deeply implanted part of his ethical standard.

~ Paul Brunton

Satan, on the contrary, is thin, ascetic and a fanatical devotee of logic. He reads Machiavelli, Ignatius of Loyola, Marx and Hegel; he is cold and unmerciful to mankind, out of a kind of mathematical mercifulness. He is damned always to do that which is most repugnant to him: to become a slaughterer, in order to abolish slaughtering, to sacrifice lambs so that no more lambs may be slaughtered, to whip people with knouts so that they may learn not to let themselves be whipped, to strip himself of every scruple in the name of a higher scrupulousness, and to challenge the hatred of mankind because of his love for it--an abstract and geometric love.

~ Arthur Koestler

It would be advisable to think of progress in the crudest, most basic terms: that no one should go hungry anymore, that there should be no more torture, no more Auschwitz. Only then will the idea of progress be free from lies.

~ Theodor W. Adorno

A man who wills commands something within himself that renders obedience, or that he believes renders obedience.

~ Friedrich Nietzsche

We think of dogs as being more like people than pigs; but pigs are highly intelligent animals and if we kept pigs as pets and reared dogs for food, we would probably reverse our order of preference. Are we turning persons into bacon?

~ Peter Singer

For though I was raised Protestant, my true religion is actually civility. Please note that I do not call my faith “politeness.” That’s part of it, yes, but I say civility because I believe that good manners are essential to the preservation of humanity— one’s own and others’— but only to the extent that that civility is honest and reasonable, not merely the mindless handmaiden of propriety.

~ Kathleen Rooney

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.

~ Patrick Jennings

The search for scapegoats is essentially an abnegation of responsibility: it indicates an inability to assess honestly and intelligently the true nature of the problems which lie at the root of social and economic difficulties and a lack of resolve in grappling with them.

~ Aung San Suu Kyi

Why give a robot an order to obey orders—why aren't the original orders enough? Why command a robot not to do harm—wouldn't it be easier never to command it to do harm in the first place? Does the universe contain a mysterious force pulling entities toward malevolence, so that a positronic brain must be programmed to withstand it? Do intelligent beings inevitably develop an attitude problem? (…) Now that computers really have become smarter and more powerful, the anxiety has waned. Today's ubiquitous, networked computers have an unprecedented ability to do mischief should they ever go to the bad. But the only mayhem comes from unpredictable chaos or from human malice in the form of viruses. We no longer worry about electronic serial killers or subversive silicon cabals because we are beginning to appreciate that malevolence—like vision, motor coordination, and common sense—does not come free with computation but has to be programmed in. (…) Aggression, like every other part of human behavior we take for granted, is a challenging engineering problem!

~ Steven Pinker

No justification of virtue will enable a man to be virtuous. Without the aid of trained emotions the intellect is powerless against the animal organism. I had sooner play cards against a man who was quite skeptical about ethics, but bred to believe that ‘a gentleman does not cheat’, than against an irreproachable moral philosopher who had been brought up among sharpers.

~ C.s. Lewis

Immorality sanctified by tradition is still immorality.

~ Bernard E. Rollin

What men do matters more than what they know.

~ John Christopher

... luckily, Eden is soon populated. The ethical dimension begins when the other appears on the scene.

~ Umberto Eco

Our stable and eternal verities are being challenged. There's a kind of postmodern breakdown in journalism. The breadth of information sources and the speed of transmission are growing, but the traditional gravity of news has eroded. -Jin Yongquan

~ Judy Polumbaum