Quote Lady's Quotes by Subject, Ethics

Ethics

The act of acting morally is behaving as if everything we do matters.--Gloria Steinem
Action indeed is the sole medium of expression for ethics.--Jane Addams
Because you're able to do it and because you have the right to do it doesn't mean it's right to do it.--Dr. Laura Schlessinger
Courage is the most important of all the virtues, because without courage you can't practice any other virtue consistently. You can practice any virtue erratically, but nothing consistently without courage.--Maya Angelou.
The courage of life is often a less dramatic spectacle than the courage of a final moment, but it is no less than a magnificent mixture of triumph and tragedy. People do what they must--in spite of personal consequences, in spite of obstacles and dangers and pressures--and that is the basis of all human morality.--John F. Kennedy
Do not be too moral. You may cheat yourself out of much life so. Aim above morality. Be not simply good, be good for something.--Henry David Thoreau
Do the thing that is right even when the boss isn't looking, because the boss isn't a criterion the real boss is standing alongside you every moment of your life.--Alfred P. Haake
Ethical dilemmas have a way of sneaking up on a person. If something smells funny, stay away from it. Or help get rid of it.-—Price Pritchett
Ethics is nothing else than reverence for life.--Albert Schweitzer
Excellence calls for character, integrity, fairness, honesty ... a determination to do what's right. High ethical standards, across the board.--Price Pritchett
Freedom, morality, and the human dignity of the individual consists precisely in this; that he does good not because he is forced to do so, but because he freely conceives it, wants it, and loves it.--Mikhail Bakunin (God and the State)
Humanity has every reason to place the proclaimers of high moral standards and values above the discoverers of objective truth. What humanity own to personalities like Buddha, Moses, and Jesus ranks for me higher than all the achievements of the of the inquiring constructive mind.--Albert Einstein (in Albert Einstein: the Human Side by Dukas and Hoffman)
I am not interested in power for power's sake, but I'm interested in power that is moral, that is right and that is good.--Martin Luther King, Jr.
Let me give you a definition of ethics: It is good to maintain and further life it is bad to damage and destroy life.--Albert Schweitzer ("Religion and Modern Civilization" Christian Century, November 28, 1934)
Living a life of integrity is one of the greatest missions we can undertake.--Greg Anderson
A man without ethics is a wild beast loosed upon this world.--Manly Hall
Men of integrity, by their very existence, rekindle the belief that as a people we can live above the level of moral squalor. We need that belief; a cynical community is a corrupt community.--John W. Gardner ("The aims of a Free People" Excellence)
The moral test of government is how it treats those who are in the dawn of life--the children; those who are in the twilight of life--the aged; and those who are in the shadows of life--the sick, the needy and the handicapped.--Hubert Humphrey (speech, 1977)
Morality and religion are but words to him who fishes in gutters for the means of sustaining life, and crouches behind barrels in the street for shelter from the cutting blasts of a winter night.--Horace Greeley
Morality cannot be legislated but behavior can be regulated. Judicial decrees may change the heart, but they can restrain the heartless.--Martin Luther King, Jr. (Strength to Love)
The more prohibitions you have, the less virtuous people will be. The more weapons you have, the less secure people will be.--Lao-tzu (Tao Te Ching trans. by Stephen Mitchell)
The most important human endeavor is the striving for morality in our actions. Our inner balance and even our very existence depend on it. Only morality in our actions can give beauty and dignity to life.--Albert Einstein (in a letter 11/20/50)
Non-violence leads to the highest ethics, which is the goal of all evolution. Until we stop harming all other living beings, we are still savages.--Thomas Alva Edison
Nothing is politically right which is morally wrong.--Daniel O'Connell
People need religion. It's a vehicle for a moral tradition. A crucial role. Nothing can take its place.--Irving Kristol
A person educated in mind and not in morals is a menace to society.--Juanita Kidd Stout
Physical courage, which despises all danger, will make a man brave in one way; and moral courage, which despises all opinion, will make a man brave in another. The former would seem most necessary for the camp, the latter for council; but to constitute a great man, both are necessary.—-Charles Caleb Colton
Piety and morality are but the same spirit differently manifested. Piety is religion with its fact toward God; morality is religion with its fact toward the world.--Tryon Edwards
The recognition of the sanctity of the life of every man is the first and only basis of all morality.--Leo Tolstoy (The Kingdom of God is Within You)
There is a universal moral law, as distinct from a moral code, which consists of certain statements of fact about the nature of man, and by behaving in conformity with which, man may enjoy his true freedom.--Dorothy L. Sayers (The Mind of the Maker)
There is ... only one categorical imperative. It is: Act only according to that maxim by which you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.--Immanuel Kant (Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals)
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...--Albert Schweitzer
The three hardest tasks in the world are neither physical feats nor intellectual achievements, but moral acts: to return love for hate, to include the excluded, and to say, "I was wrong".--Sydney Harris
To educate a man in mind and not in morals is to educate a menace to society.--Theodore Roosevelt
True morality consists no in following the beaten track, but in finding out the true path for ourselves and fearlessly following it.--Mohandas K. Gandhi (Ethical Religion)
Two things fill my mind with ever-increasing wonder and awe: ... The starry skies above me and the moral law within me.--Immanuel Kant (The Categorical Imperative)
We become just by performing just actions, temperate by performing temperate actions, brave by performing brave actions.--Aristotle
We endeavor to make a virtue of the faults we are unwilling to correct.--François de La Rochefoucauld
We pay a price when we deprive children of the exposure to the values, principles, and education they need to make them good citizens.--Sandra Day O'Connor
What is morally wrong can never be advantageous, even when it enables you to make some gain that you believe to be to your advantage. The mere act of believing that some wrongful course of action constitutes an advantage is pernicious.--Marcus Tullius Cicero
What is the nature of true morality? I have argued ... that it must be a kind of ethics involving letting go of one's own interest on behalf of others, being ready if necessary to sacrifice one's own interests for them, even on behalf of an enemy.--George Ellis
When it comes to practicing good ethics, saying no to a vice is not good enough. A quality life is never achieved by focusing on the elimination of what is wrong. True success requires you to focus your mental, emotional, and spiritual energies on pursuing that which is right and good. Trying to become virtuous merely by excluding vice is as unrealistic as trying to cultivate roses simply by eliminating weeds.--Gary Ryan Blair (Mind Munchies : A Delicious Assortment of Brain Snacks!)
Without civic morality communities perish; without personal morality their survival has no value.--Bertrand Russell (<"Individual and Social Ethics," Authority and the Individual)
Without ethics, everything happens as if we were all five billion passengers on a big machinery and nobody is driving the machinery. And it's going faster and faster, but we don't know where.--Jacques Cousteau (interview, CNN, 2/24/89)
The world has achieved brilliance without wisdom, power without conscience. Our is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants.--General Omar Bradley (in a speech in Boston, Mass, 11/10/48)
The world is not dangerous because of those who do harm but because of those who look at it without doing anything.--Albert Einstein