Ethics Quotes

Consider the recent financial crisis and its link to faulty reward systems. President Bill Clinton's objective of increasing homeownership by rewarding potential home buyers and lenders is one example. The Clinton administration went to ridiculous lengths to increase homeownership in the United State, promoting paper-thin down payments and pushing lenders to give mortgage loans to unqualified buyers according to Business Week editor Peter Coy.

~ Max H. Bazerman

A truth that's told with bad intent - beats all the lies you can invent.

~ William Blake

An election is a moral horror as bad as a battle except for the blood a mud bath for every soul concerned in it.

~ George Bernard Shaw

An improper mind is a perpetual feast.

~ Logan Pearsall Smith

Every man has his moral backside too which he doesn't expose unnecessarily but keeps covered as long as possible by the trousers of decorum.

~ G. C. Lichtenberg

In statesmanship get formalities right never mind about the moralities.

~ Mark Twain

It is a public scandal that gives offence and it is no sin to sin in secret.

~ Molière

Moral indignation is in most cases 2% moral 48% indignation and 50% envy.

~ Vittorio De Sica

Morality is the theory that every human act must be either right or wrong and that 99% of them are wrong.

~ H. L. Mencken

Of moral purpose I see no trace in Nature. That is an article of exclusively human manufacture - and very much to our credit.

~ Thomas Huxley

One of the misfortunes of our time is that in getting rid of false shame we have killed off so much real shame as well.

~ Louis Kronenberger

Straight is the gate and narrow is the way which leadeth unto life and few there be that find it.

~ Bible

The flea though he kill none he does all the harm he can.

~ John Donne

The only people who should really sin are the people who can sin with a grin.

~ Ogden Nash

The so-called new morality has too often the old immorality condoned.

~ Lord Shawcross

To act without rapacity to use knowledge with wisdom to respect interdependence to operate without hubris and greed are not simply moral imperatives. They are an accurate scientific description of the means of survival.

~ Barbara Ward

If some great power would agree to make me always think what is true and do what is right on condition of being some sort of clock and wound up every morning before I got out of bed I should close instantly with the offer.

~ Thomas Huxley

We have two kinds of morality side by side: one which we preach but do not practice and the other which we practice but seldom preach.

~ Bertrand Russell

There are ten commandments right? Well it's like an exam. You get eight out of ten you're just about top of the class.

~ Mordecai Richler

A man does not have to be an angel in order to be a saint.

~ Albert Schweitzer

No man is so exquisitely honest or upright in living but that ten times in his life he might not lawfully be hanged.

~ Michel De Montaigne

It is often easier to fight for principles than to live up to them.

~ Adlai Stevenson

Only that which does not teach which does not cry out which does not condescend which does not explain is irresistible.

~ William Butler Yeats

Quality - in its classic Greek sense - how to live with grace and intelligence with bravery and mercy.

~ Theodore H. White

What is morality in any given time or place? It is what the majority then and there happen to like and immorality is what they dislike.

~ Alfred North Whitehead

No morality can be founded on authority even if the authority were divine.

~ A. J. Ayer

In any assembly the simplest way to stop transacting business and split the ranks is to appeal to a principle.

~ Jacques Barzun

He who would do good to another must do it in minute particulars: general good is the plea of the scoundrel hypocrite and flatterer. For art and science cannot exist but in minutely organized particulars.

~ William Blake

You've got to be brave and you've got to be bold. Brave enough to take your chance on your own discrimination - what's right and what's wrong what's good and what's bad.

~ Robert Frost

Most people sell their souls and live with a good conscience on the proceeds.

~ Logan Pearsall Smith

This world is white no longer and it will never be white again.

~ James Baldwin

Below the navel there is neither religion nor truth.

~ Italian Proverb

It is customary these days to ignore what should be done in favour of what pleases us.

~ Plautus

What is morality but immemorial custom? Conscience is the chief of conservatives.

~ Henry David Thoreau

What you get free costs too much.

~ Jean Anouilh

You cannot receive a shock unless you have an electric affinity for that which shocks you.

~ Henry David Thoreau

Even moderation ought not to be practised to excess.

~ Anonymous

When a blind man carries the lame man both go forward.

~ Swedish Proverb

I have found by experience that they who have spent all their lives in cities improve their talents but impair their virtues and strengthen their minds but weaken their morals.

~ Charles Caleb Colton

Shame and guilt are noble emotions essential in the maintenance of civilized society and vital for the development of some of the most refined and elegant qualities of human potential - generosity service self-sacrifice unselfishness and duty.

~ Willard Gaylen