Quotes About Morality And Ethics

#1. Refusal to stand up for what you believe in weakens individual morality and ethics as well as those of the culture.

Bell Hooks

#2. Without morality and ethics there is no religion (dharma), the foundation of religion is morality and ethics.

Dada Bhagwan

#3. Morality and ethics are nothing but footballs, wherewith people, strong people play to win points.

Theodore Dreiser

#4. Integrity, a standard of personal morality and ethics, is not relative to the situation you happen to find yourself in and doesn't sell out to expediency. Its short supply is getting shorter - but without it, leadership is a facade.

Denis Waitley

#5. Naturalism attempts to fortify itself against God by altogether shutting Him out of public life, social policy, the courts, and eliminating all biblical influence in morality and ethics.

John F. MacArthur Jr.

#6. I gravitate toward the law, I think, certainly more times than not, because it's our best mechanism for legislating human behavior, and morality, and ethics.

David E. Kelley

#7. Stand for something. Don't quest for popularity at the expense of morality and ethics and honesty.

Howard Cosell

#8. You're damn right we need a rational code of morality and ethics. But not much progress can be made in that direction while we've still got a majority ranting about gods, devils, souls, and absolute morality, and using an ancient book written by ignorant nomads as a guide.

Doug Graham

#9. Improving the world can be a nasty and ugly and difficult and dangerous business ... because when you improve the world, you threaten the entrenched interests of evil people.

Stefan Molyneux

#10. When you transcend the transcendent states, you get past the ego structure, and at that point you don't need laws, you have "morality!" You have inborn, natural ethics, because it is built on Love.

Edgar Mitchell

#11. Who could ever reckon up the damage done to love and friendship and all hopes of happiness by a surfeit or depletion of this or that neurotransmitter? And who will ever find a morality, an ethics down among the enzymes and amino acids when the general taste is for looking in the other direction?

Ian McEwan

#12. Egoism holds, therefore, is that each man's happiness is the sole good--that a number of different things are each of them the only good thing there is--an absolute contradiction! No more complete and thorough refutation of any theory could be desired.

G.E. Moore

#13. The fisherman of the Colombian coast must be learned doctors of ethics and morality, for they invented the word sentipensante, or 'feeling-thinking' to define language that speaks the truth. Eduardo Galeano

Rob Brezsny

#14. An important species of pleasure, and therewith the source of morality, arises out of habit.

Friedrich Nietzsche

#15. Morality is not respectability.

George Bernard Shaw

#16. Morality consists in this for each individual: to attempt each time to extend its region of clear expression, to try to augment its amplitude, so as to produce a free act that expresses the most possible in one given condition or another.
Gilles Deleuze, The Fold: Leibniz and the Baroque, 73

Gilles Deleuze

#17. If 10 percent of the population were to take a consciously ethical outlook on life and act accordingly, the resulting change would be more significant than any change of government,

Peter Singer

#18. This is biblical ethics. It has little to do with the middle-class ethics of avoiding a few things which are supposed to be wrong and doing a few things which are supposed to be right. Biblical ethics means standing in ultimate decisions for or against God.

Paul Tillich

#19. Jesus was not content to derive his ethics from the scriptures of his upbringing. He explicitly departed from them. [ ... ] Since a principal thesis of this chapter is that we do not, and should not, derive our morals from scripture, Jesus has to be honoured as a model for that very thesis.

Richard Dawkins

#20. If truth and moral values are relative, one cannot claim that certain human rights are universally applicable to all cultures and all people.

Stephen McAndrew

#21. Peace is found when people stand for morality and reject
culture. Defend freedom at all costs and at all times and peace
will rule the world instead of tyrants.

Jeremy Locke

#22. As long as human labor power, and, consequently, life itself, remain articles of sale and purchase, of exploitation and robbery, the principle of the "sacredness of human life" remains a shameful lie, uttered with the object of keeping the oppressed slaves in their chains.

Leon Trotsky

#23. All the social ills that
law presumes to correct exist because people are not free to
learn and grow.

Jeremy Locke

#24. Independence that has declared its 'independence' from the sure and certain compass of sound morals is nothing more than rogue greed having scantily dressed itself in the garb of independence while running off the cliff of anarchy.

Craig D. Lounsbrough

#25. Ethics, decency and morality are the real soldiers

Kiran Bedi

#26. Some people can be reasoned into sense, and others must be shocked into it.

Thomas Paine

#27. In a world where profit is consistently put before both people and the planet, climate economics has everything to do with ethics and morality.

Naomi Klein

#28. A man's ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties and needs; no religious basis is necessary. Man would be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hopes of reward after death.

Albert Einstein

#29. 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

#30. As you say of yourself, I too am an Epicurean. I consider the genuine (not the imputed) doctrines of Epicurus as containing everything rational in moral philosophy which Greece and Rome have left us.
[Letter to William Short, 31 October 1819]

Thomas Jefferson

#31. Morality he found amusing, in the obscure way that only a man with a Ph.D. in philosophy could find such things amusing, but justice and ethics were inflexible measures, applicable to all, and not to be joked about.

Charlie Huston

#32. 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

#33. To live in a state of liberty is not to live apart from law. It is, on the contrary, to live under the highest law, the only law that can really profit a man, the law which is consciously and deliberately imposed by himself on himself.

Auberon Herbert

#34. 'Wherefore, brethren, thus must ye train yourselves : Liberation of the will through love will develop, we will often practice it, we will make it vehicle and base, take our stand upon it, store it up, throughly set it going.'

Gautama Buddha

#35. 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

#36. In statesmanship get formalities right, never mind about the moralities.

Mark Twain

#37. [W]e must start from somewhere in current folk morality, otherwise we start from somewhere unintuitive, and that can hardly be a good place to start

Frank Jackson

#38. Day and Night
The night is long: do not shorten it by sleep. The day is fair: do not darken it with wrongdoing.

Idries Shah

#39. It isn't the evil and indecent who are flung down into the depths, no! Oh, no! The evil and decisive fling down those who are moral, honest and noble but maladroit, hesitant and full of scruples.

Andrzej Sapkowski

#40. A philosopher is someone who promotes moral excellence, argues for moral excellence, and gets other people to behave morally and excellently based on those arguments.

Stefan Molyneux

#41. We'd do well to remember that at the end of the day, the law doesn't defend us; we defend the law. And when it becomes contrary to our morals, we have both the right and the responsibility to rebalance it toward just ends.

Edward Snowden

#42. A person may cause evil to others not only by his actions but by his inaction, and in either case he is justly accountable to them for the injury.

John Stuart Mill

#43. When you go to the polls, ethics and morality should be part of the evaluation.

John Shimkus

#44. We colour and mould according to the wants within us whatever our eyes bring in.

Thomas Hardy

#45. One's interest or need does not annul other's right.

Al-Hafiz B.A. Masri

#46. Act so as to elicit the best in others and thereby in thyself.

Felix Adler

#47. 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

#48. We have in fact, two kinds of morality, side by side: one which we preach, but do not practice, and another which we practice, but seldom preach.

Bertrand Russell

#49. The actual theme of corruption can condemn humanity and this conflict can be resolved when people are diligent to put an end to this catastrophe as a community.

Saaif Alam

#50. With good morality first candidates you'll get bad candor, bad ethics, bad loyalty and bad morality - lastly bad odor will surface to save the day if you maintain good optimism like I do.

Brian Spellman

#51. Purpose, or mission, is determined by the development of values, balance, ethics, humor, morality, and sensitivities. It manifests itself in the way we look at life.

Luci Swindoll

#52. The argument about ethics and morality will have to go on in a post-religious society, just as it had to go on when religion was regnant and was often ordering good people to agree to evil things such as torture, slavery, or cruelty to children.

Christopher Hitchens

#53. How is it possible that suffering that is neither my own nor of my concern should immediately affect me as though it were my own, and with such force that is moves me to action?

Arthur Schopenhauer

#54. The moral sense enables one to perceive morality, and avoid it. The immoral sense enables one to perceive immorality and enjoy it.

Mark Twain

#55. A nation's domestic and foreign policies and actions should be derived from the same standards of ethics, honesty and morality which are characteristic of the individual citizens of the nation.

Jimmy Carter

#56. Some people that are in charge are usually less intelligent than the people who work under them. The reason why those people are in charge and you aren't is because you have a conscience.

Heather Chapple

#57. I don't want to become like him. Become one of those people who believe it's okay to do anything to anyone if it achieves the 'right' end.

Lisa M. Lilly

#58. What is law? Is it what is on the books, or what is actually enacted and obeyed in a society? Or is law what must be enacted and obeyed, whether or not it is on the books, if things are to go right?

Bernhard Schlink

#59. The difference between the old and the new education being) in a word, the old was a kind of propagation - men transmitting manhood to men; the new is merely propaganda.

C.S. Lewis

#60. There's a saying that you can't put a price on a human life, but that saying is a lie because we have. We have, and it's so much lower than you would think. Yes, human life has its price like anything else, and will continue to do so for as long as it doubles as a commodity.

Nenia Campbell

#61. Find out the difference between ethics and morality, but never forget to be kind.

Debasish Mridha

#62. Western philosophy, then, is not an extended debate about knowledge, ethics, and reality, but a succession of conceptual metaphors. Descartes's philosophy is based on KNOWING IS SEEING, Locke's on the MIND IS A CONTAINER, Kant's on MORALITY IS A STRICT FATHER, and so on.

Steven Pinker

#63. You must always focus on and pursue the good, but when that darkness surges up from within, you need to know how to handle it, use it, and release it wisely, not just deny its presence or acceptability as you suppress it within you.

A.J. Darkholme

#64. Without man and his potential for moral progress, the whole of reality would be a mere wilderness, a thing in vain, and have no final purpose.

Immanuel Kant

#65. Science, as long as it limits itself to the descriptive study of the laws of nature, has no moral or ethical quality and this applies to the physical as well as the biological sciences.

Ernst Boris Chain

#66. Don't judge me. Ethics and morality no longer exist in our world. It's a luxury of the past, afforded only to those who had a future.

T.M. Williams

#67. Whatever is my right as a man is also the right of another; and it becomes my duty to guarantee as well as to possess.

Thomas Paine

#68. Spirituality is not primarily about values and ethics, not about exhortations to do right or live well. The spiritual traditions are primarily about reality ... an effort to penetrate the illusions of the external world and to name its underlying truth.

Parker J. Palmer

#69. It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets.

Voltaire

#70. Wherever morality is based on theology, wherever right is made dependent on divine authority, the most immoral, unjust, infamous things can be justified and established.

Ludwig Feuerbach

#71. Ethics, too, are nothing but reverence for life. This is what gives me the fundamental principle of morality, namely, that good consists in maintaining, promoting, and enhancing life, and that destroying, injuring, and limiting life are evil.

Albert Schweitzer

#72. The time has come for all evangelists to practice full financial disclosure. The world is watching how we walk and how we talk. We must have the highest standards of morality, ethics and integrity if we are to continue to have influence.

Billy Graham

#73. Morality must guide calculation, and calculation must guide politics.

Madame De Stael

#74. There can be no question of holding forth on ethics. I have seen people behave badly with great morality and I note every day that integrity has no need of rules

Albert Camus

#75. Fine blunderers in ethics we are, so generally conveying to children the basic impression that pleasantness must be wrong, and right doing unpleasant!

Charlotte Perkins Gilman

#76. We ought so to behave to one another as to avoid making enemies of our friends, and at the same time to make friends of our enemies.

Pythagoras

#77. Ethics and I had crossed paths recently, and I'm not sure that I fell on the right side of the morality line.

S.C. Stephens

#78. The experience of previous years leads to one conclusion: there is one morality in politics and another for economy. In the years since 1989, the morality of the economy has fully prevailed over the ethics of politics and democracy.

Alexis Tsipras

#79. Morality does not come to this mortal world from some imaginary paradise. It rises from the neurons of mortal humans.

Abhijit Naskar

#80. Especially when it comes to animals used for food, humanity's reasoning power and concern about fairness plummets.

Karen Davis

#81. I think moralistic science is bad for morals and bad for science.

Steven Pinker

#82. State a moral case to a plowman and a professor. The former will decide it as well, and often better than the latter, because he has not been led astray by artificial rules.

Thomas Jefferson

#83. Laws and principles are not for the times when there is no temptation: they are for such moments as this, when body and soul rise in mutiny against their rigour ... If at my convenience I might break them, what would be their worth?

Charlotte Bronte

#84. If someone was going to kill someone dear to you, and you could stop that person by killing them instead, would you kill them, knowing it was an effective way to save your loved one?

A.J. Darkholme

#85. Just as Man developed morals and ethical behavior over thousands of years of evolution; so, too, did he invent an authority figure to enforce these behaviors - God.

Lex Allen

#86. Even putting aside the Judeo-Christian morality upon which the Constitution and our nation's culture are based, the notion of forced euthanasia would contradict the long-held body of medical ethics to which all American doctors must adhere.

Sherwin B. Nuland

#87. I will call no being good who is not what I mean when I apply that epithet to my fellow creatures; and if such a creature can sentence me to hell for not so calling him, to hell I will go .

John Stuart Mill

#88. The question is where are business ethics and morality if one of the parties wants to dishonor a binding contract, just because in retrospect it realizes it could perhaps have got a better price!

Anil Ambani

#89. Ethics evolve naturally, and we trample upon them with laws created by reason and experience.

Winston Churchill

#90. In charity to all mankind, bearing no malice or ill will to any human being, and even compassionating those who hold in bondage their fellow men, not knowing what they do.

John Quincy Adams

#91. Rationality belongs to the cool observer, but because of the stupidity of the average man, he follows not reason, but faith, and the naive faith requires necessary illusion and emotionally potent oversimplifications which are provided by the myth-maker to keep ordinary person on course.

Reinhold Niebuhr

#92. The orthodox tend to think that people who, like the postmodernists and me, believe neither in God nor in some suitable substitute, must feel that everything is permitted, that everybody can do what they like.

Richard M. Rorty

#93. For women especially, virginity has become the easy answer- the morality quick fix. You can be vapid, stupid, and unethical, but so long as you've never had sex, you're a "good" (i.e. "moral) girl and therefore worthy of praise.

Jessica Valenti

#94. In happiness and suffering, in joy and grief, we should regard all creatures as we regard our own self.

Mahavira

#95. 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

#96. If practicality and morality are polarized and you must choose, you must do what you think is right, rather than what you think is practical.

Philip K. Dick

#97. 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

#98. Politics is about ethics and morality, openly or not openly.

Aleksandar Hemon

#99. In silence, an act is an act is an act. Verbalized and discussed, it becomes an ethical problem ...

Aldous Huxley

#100. What good does it do to tell somebody to live morally so they can die 50 years later and apparently go to Hell?

Donald Miller