142 Ethics Quotes

In a world where choices often define our character, ethics serve as the guiding principles that navigate us through the complexities of right and wrong. Whether contemplating personal decisions or grappling with societal issues, ethical considerations are pivotal. To inspire mindful living and elevate thoughtful discussions, we've curated a collection of the top 142 ethics quotes. These powerful words from philosophers, leaders, and thinkers across history offer profound insights and timeless wisdom. Dive in and let these quotes provoke reflection, ignite your moral compass, and encourage ethical actions in everyday life.

1. “The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated.” - Mahatma Gandhi

2. “While we ourselves are the living graves of murdered beasts, how can we expect any ideal conditions on this earth?” - George Bernard Shaw

3. “The thinking (person) 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.” - Albert Schweitzer

4. “Imaginary evil is romantic and varied; real evil is gloomy, monotonous, barren, boring. Imaginary good is boring; real good is always new, marvelous, intoxicating.” - Simone Weil

5. “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

6. “The creed which accepts as the foundation of morals, Utility, or the Greatest-Happiness Principle, holds that actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness. By happiness is intended pleasure, and the absence of pain; by unhappiness, pain, and the privation of pleasure.” - John Stuart Mill

7. “Whenever governments adopt a moral tone - as opposed to an ethical one - you know something is wrong.” - John Ralston Saul

8. “I'm worried that students will take their obedient place in society and look to become successful cogs in the wheel - let the wheel spin them around as it wants without taking a look at what they're doing. I'm concerned that students not become passive acceptors of the official doctrine that's handed down to them from the White House, the media, textbooks, teachers and preachers.” - Howard Zinn

9. “The word "good" has many meanings. For example, if a man were to shoot his grandmother at a range of five hundred yards, I should call him a good shot, but not necessarily a good man.” - G.K. Chesterton

10. “Conscience is the inner voice that warns us somebody may be looking.” - H.L. Mencken

11. “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

12. “Not only to myself or before the mirror or at the hour of my death, which I hope will be long in coming, but in the presence of my children and my wife and in the face of the peaceful life I’m building, I must acknowledge: (1) That under Stalin I wouldn’t have wasted my youth in the gulag or ended up with a bullet in the back of my head. (2) That in the McCarthy era I wouldn’t have lost my job or had to pump gas at a gas station. (3) That under Hitler, however, I would have been one of those who chose the path of exile, and that under Franco I wouldn’t have composed sonnets to the caudillo or the Holy Virgin like so many lifelong democrats. One thing is as true as the other. My bravery has its limits, certainly, but so does what I’m willing to swallow. Everything that begins as comedy ends as tragicomedy.” - Roberto Bolaño

13. “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 Brontë

14. “Education without values, as useful as it is, seems rather to make man a more clever devil.” - C.S. Lewis

15. “Similarly with regard to truth, won't we say that a soul is maimed if it hates a voluntary falsehood, cannot endure to have one in itself, and is greatly angered when it exists in others, but is nonetheless content to accept an involuntary falsehood, isn't angry when it is caught being ignorant, and bears its lack of learning easily, wallowing in it like a pig?” - Plato

16. “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

17. “When morality comes up against profit, it is seldom that profit loses.” - Shirley Chisholm

18. “The disappearance of a sense of responsibility is the most far-reaching consequence of submission to authority.” - Stanley Milgram

19. “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

20. “The labours of men of genius, however erroneously directed, scarcely ever fail in ultimately turning to the solid advantage of mankind.” - Mary Shelley

21. “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

22. “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

23. “The law of evolution is that the strongest survives!' 'Yes, and the strongest, in the existence of any social species, are those who are most social. In human terms, most ethical...There is no strength to be gained from hurting one another. Only weakness.” - Ursula K. Le Guin

24. “True education does not consist merely in the acquiring of a few facts of science, history, literature, or art, but in the development of character.” - David O. McKay

25. “With deregulation, privatisation, free trade, what we're seeing is yet another enclosure and, if you like, private taking of the commons. One of the things I find very interesting in our current debates is this concept of who creates wealth. That wealth is only created when it's owned privately. What would you call clean water, fresh air, a safe environment? Are they not a form of wealth? And why does it only become wealth when some entity puts a fence around it and declares it private property? Well, you know, that's not wealth creation. That's wealth usurpation.” - Elaine Bernard

26. “In the newspapers the row about the prospect of genetically modified food raged on, and yet here were consumers effectively demanding lambs with four back legs.” - Rose Prince

27. “Just because I do not accept the teachings of the devotaries does not mean I've discarded a belief in right and wrong.""But the Almighty determines what is right!""Must someone, some unseen thing, declare what is right for it to be right? I believe that my own morality -- which answers only to my heart -- is more sure and true than the morality of those who do right only because they fear retribution.” - Brandon Sanderson

28. “What I'm asking you to entertain is that there is nothing we need to believe on insufficient evidence in order to have deeply ethical and spiritual lives.” - Sam Harris

29. “It is taboo in our society to criticize a persons religious faith... these taboos are offensive, deeply unreasonable, but worse than that, they are getting people killed. This is really my concern. My concern is that our religions, the diversity of our religious doctrines, is going to get us killed. I'm worried that our religious discourse- our religious beliefs are ultimately incompatible with civilization.” - Sam Harris

30. “Faith does not offer a strong link between our beliefs and actual states of the world.” - Sam Harris

31. “We have a choice. We have two options as human beings. We have a choice between conversation and war. That's it. Conversation and violence. And faith is a conversation stopper.” - Sam Harris

32. “He was impregnably armored by his good intentions and his ignorance.” - Graham Greene

33. “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

34. “Ethics is a dream.” - Charles Baxter

35. “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

36. “A man who wills commands something within himself that renders obedience, or that he believes renders obedience.” - Friedrich Nietzsche

37. “What men do matters more than what they know.” - John Christopher

38. “For we each of us deserve everything, every luxury that was ever piled in the tombs of the dead kings, and we each of us deserve nothing, not a mouthful of bread in hunger. Have we not eaten while another starved? Will you punish us for that? Will you reward us for the virtue of starving while others ate? No man earns punishment, no man earns reward. Free your mind of the idea of deserving, the idea of earning, and you will begin to be able to think.” - Ursula K. Le Guin

39. “Media work needs ideals. Maybe thirty years from now, after I retire, I'll see the media mature and make the transition from political party, interest group, and corporate to truly public. But over the next ten years, the encroachment of commercialism and worldliness will loom much larger than the democratization we imagine. -Jin Yongquan in China Ink” - Judy Polumbaum

40. “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

41. “I think that of all the principles for journalism, the most important is to complicate simple things and simplify complicated things. At first sight, you may think something is simple, but it may conceal a great deal. However, facing a very complex thing, you should find out its essence. -Jin Yongquan” - Judy Polumbaum

42. “I would tell young journalists to be brave and go against the tide. When everyone else is relying on the internet, you should not; when nobody's walking, you should walk; when few people are reading profound books, you should read. ... rather than seeking a plusher life you should pursue some hardship. Eat simple food. When everyone's going for quick results, pursue things of lasting value. Don't follow the crowd; go in the opposite direction. If others are fast, be slow. -- Jin Yongquan” - Judy Polumbaum

43. “I used to think the most important thing for a reporter was to be where the news is and be the first to know. Now I feel a reporter should be able to effect change. Your reporting should move people and motivate people to change the world. Maybe this is too idealistic. Young people who want to be journalists must, first, study and, second, recognize that they should never be the heroes of the story. ..A journalist must be curious, and must be humble. --Zhou Yijun” - Judy Polumbaum

44. “People often say that humans have always eaten animals, as if this is a justification for continuing the practice. According to this logic, we should not try to prevent people from murdering other people, since this has also been done since the earliest of times.” - Isaac Bashevis Singer

45. “From the ethical point of view, no one can escape responsibility with the excuse that he is only an individual, on whom the fate of the world does not depend. Not only can this not be known objectively for certain, because it is always possible that it will depend precisely on the individual, but this kind of thinking is also made impossible by the very essence of ethics, by conscience and the sense of responsibility.” - Georg Lukacs

46. “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

47. “Diese Haltung zur Opferung von Menschenleben ist seltsam. Militärbefehlshaber überlegen nicht zweimal, wenn sie Soldaten in die Schlacht schicken und dabei genau wissen, dass viele von ihnen sterben werden. [...] Andererseits verbietet es der Offiziersethos, einzelne Soldaten auszuwählen und ihnen zu befehlen, ihr Leben zu opfern [...]. Und doch - und das ist noch paradoxer - werden Soldaten, die eine solche Tat aus eigener Initiative vollbringen, als Helden betrachtet.” - J.M. Coetzee

48. “Disgust is so reassuring; it feels like a moral proof.” - Jed Rubenfeld

49. “Morality is neither rational nor absolute nor natural. World has known many moral systems, each of which advances claims universality; all moral systems are therefore particular, serving a specific purpose for their propagators or creators, and enforcing a certain regime that disciplines human beings for social life by narrowing our perspectives and limiting our horizons.” - Friedrich Nietzsche

50. “Liberty medals...Are they trying to bribe me with coloured ribbons? I wouldn't kill a man for one of those things. Or go and be killed. Any shooting I do is to save my own life, and not for a ribbon and a hunk of bronze. [says Mäkelä]” - Väinö Linna

51. “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

52. “An ethics of desire is good news for those of us who have become allergic to an ethics of law.” - Jean Vanier

53. “Good and evil both increase at compound interest.” - C.S. Lewis

54. “Create all the happiness you are able to create; remove all the misery you are able to remove. Every day will allow you, --will invite you to add something to the pleasure of others, --or to diminish something of their pains.” - Jeremy Bentham

55. “Even in the era of AIDS, sex raises no unique moral issues at all. Decisions about sex may involve considerations about honesty, concern for others, prudence, and so on, but there is nothing special about sex in this respect, for the same could be said of decisions about driving a car. (In fact, the moral issues raised by driving a car, both from an environmental and from a safety point of view, are much more serious than those raised by sex.)” - Peter Singer

56. “The task of a philosophy of photography is to reflect upon this possibility of freedom - and thus its significance - in a world dominated by apparatuses; to reflect upon the way in which, despite everything, it is possible for human beings to give significance to their lives in the face of the chance necessity of death. Such a philosophy is necessary because it is the only form of revolution left open to us.” - Vilém Flusser

57. “By the way, I never realized that to be nonbelieving, to be an atheist, was a thing to be proud of. It went without saying as it were....Our creed is indeed a queer creed. You others, Christians (and similar people), consider our ethics much inferior, indeed abominable. There is that little difference. We adhere to ours in practice, you don't.” - Erwin Schrödinger

58. “I suppose therefore that all things I see are illusions; I believe that nothing has ever existed of everything my lying memory tells me. I think I have no senses. I believe that body, shape, extension, motion, location are functions. What is there then that can be taken as true? Perhaps only this one thing, that nothing at all is certain.” - René Descartes

59. “Virtue is more to be feared than vice, because its excesses are not subject to the regulation of conscience.” - Adam Smith

60. “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

61. “High Europe always played at ethnic contempt because it was High Europe, and so had the strength, the authority, to make the racial rules. We great unwashed of the outer world, on the coasts of new continents, though we might ourselves have behaved atrociously to indigenes, were baffled by the determination with which Europe returned to the frenzies of racial myth. Nice boys and not-so-nice boys took up the theme, put on the uniform, did the dirty work.” - Thomas Keneally

62. “A quiet conscience makes one strong!” - Anne Frank

63. “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

64. “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

65. “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

66. “As a convinced atheist, I ought to agree with Voltaire that Judaism is not just one more religion, but in its way the root of religious evil. Without the stern, joyless rabbis and their 613 dour prohibitions, we might have avoided the whole nightmare of the Old Testament, and the brutal, crude wrenching of that into prophecy-derived Christianity, and the later plagiarism and mutation of Judaism and Christianity into the various rival forms of Islam. Much of the time, I do concur with Voltaire, but not without acknowledging that Judaism is dialectical. There is, after all, a specifically Jewish version of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment, with a specifically Jewish name—the Haskalah—for itself. The term derives from the word for 'mind' or 'intellect,' and it is naturally associated with ethics rather than rituals, life rather than prohibitions, and assimilation over 'exile' or 'return.' It's everlastingly linked to the name of the great German teacher Moses Mendelssohn, one of those conspicuous Jewish hunchbacks who so upset and embarrassed Isaiah Berlin. (The other way to upset or embarrass Berlin, I found, was to mention that he himself was a cousin of Menachem Schneerson, the 'messianic' Lubavitcher rebbe.) However, even pre-enlightenment Judaism forces its adherents to study and think, it reluctantly teaches them what others think, and it may even teach them how to think also.” - Christopher Hitchens

67. “Too many people get credit for being good, when they are only being passive. They are too often praised for being broadminded when they are so broadminded they can never make up their minds about anything.” - Fulton J. Sheen

68. “I'm not asking you to do your best. I'm asking you to do your job." -Dagny Taggart” - Ayn Rand

69. “Just take the weapon you hold in your hand and drive it through his heart," Valentine's voice was soft. "One simple motion. Nothing you haven't done before."Jace met his father's stare with a level gaze. "I saw Agramon," he said. "It had your face.""You saw Agramon?" The Soul-Sword glittered as Valentine moved toward his son. "And you lived?""I killed it.""You killed the Demon of Fear, but you won't kill a single vampire, not even at my order?"Jace stood watching Valentine without expression. "He's a vampire, that's true," he said. "But his name is Simon.” - Cassandra Clare

70. “Religion is not about accepting twenty impossible propositions before breakfast, but about doing things that change you. It is a moral aesthetic, an ethical alchemy. If you behave in a certain way, you will be transformed. The myths and laws of religion are not true because they they conform to some metaphysical, scientific or historical reality but because they are life enhancing. They tell you how human nature functions, but you will not discover their truth unless you apply these myths and doctrines to your own life and put them into practice.” - Karen Armstrong

71. “In any case I just cannot imagine attaching so much importance to any food or treat that I would grow irate or bitter at the mention of the suffering of animals. A pig to me will always seem more important than a pork rind. There is the risk here of confusing realism with cynicism, moral stoicism with moral sloth, of letting oneself become jaded and lazy and self-satisfied--what used to be called an 'appetitive' person.” - Matthew Scully

72. “We love dogs and eat cows not because dogs and cows are fundamentally different--cows, like dogs, have feelings, preferences, and consciousness--but because our perception of them is different.” - Melanie Joy

73. “Morality—like velocity—is relative. The determination of it depends on what the objects around you are doing. All one can do is measure one's position in relation to them; never can one measure one's velocity or morality in terms of absolutes.” - David Gerrold

74. “The inconsistencies that haunt our relationships with animals also result from the quirks of human cognition. We like to think of ourselves as the rational species. But research in cognitive psychology and behavioral economics shows that our thinking and behavior are often completely illogical. In one study, for example, groups of people were independently asked how much they would give to prevent waterfowl from being killed in polluted oil ponds. On average, the subjects said they would pay $80 to save 2,000 birds, $78 to save 20,000 birds, and $88 to save 200,000 birds. Sometimes animals act more logically than people do; a recent study found that when picking a new home, the decisions of ant colonies were more rational than those of human house-hunters. What is it about human psychology that makes it so difficult for us to think consistently about animals? The paradoxes that plague our interactions with other species are due to the fact that much of our thinking is a mire of instinct, learning, language, culture, intuition, and our reliance on mental shortcuts.” - Hal Herzog

75. “A freedom which is interested only in denying freedom must be denied. And it is not true that the recognition of the freedom of others limits my own freedom: to be free is not to have the power to do anything you like; it is to be able to surpass the given toward an open future; the existence of others as a freedom defines my situation and is even the condition of my own freedom. I am oppressed if I am thrown into prison, but not if I am kept from throwing my neighbor into prison.” - Simone de Beauvoir

76. “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

77. “In matters of conscience, the law of the majority has no place.” - Mahatma Gandhi

78. “On the ethics of war the Quran and the New Testament are worlds apart. Whereas Jesus tells us to turn the other cheek, the Quran tells us, 'Whoso commits aggression against you, do you commit aggression against him' (2:194). The New Testament says nothing about how to wage war. The Quran, by contrast, is filled with just-war precepts. Here war is allowed in self-defense (2:190; 22:39), but hell is the punishment for killing other Muslims (4:93), and the execution of prisoners of war is explicitly condemned (47:4). Whether in the abstract is is better to rely on a scripture that regulates war or a scripture that hopes war away is an open question, but no Muslim-majority country has yet dropped an atomic bomb in war.” - Stephen Prothero

79. “If there were a party of those who aren't sure they're right, I'd belong to it. (as quoted by Tony Judt)” - Albert Camus

80. “And so I pray I am today as honestwith myself, with life all around me and below and above me,with all who I encounter.” - Jimmy Santiago Baca

81. “Señal de tener gastada la fama propia es cuidar de la infamia ajena.” - Baltasar Gracian

82. “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

83. “Not only is there often a right and wrong, but what goes around does come around, Karma exists, chickens do come home to roost, and as my mother, Phyllis, liked to say, “There is always a day of reckoning.” The good among the great understand that every choice we make adds to the strength or weakness of our spirits—ourselves, or to use an old fashioned word for the same idea, our souls. That is every human’s life work: to construct an identity bit by bit, to walk a path step by step, to live a life that is worthy of something higher, lighter, more fulfilling, and maybe even everlasting.” - Donald Van de Mark

84. “One thing I learned as a journalist is that there is at least one disgruntled person in every workplace in America -- and at least double that number with a conscience. Hard as they try, they simply can't turn their heads away from an injustice when they see one taking place.” - Michael Francis Moore

85. “It has drowned the most heavenly ecstasies of religious fervour, of chivalrous enthusiasm, of Philistine sentimentalism, in the icy water of egotistical calculation. It has resolved personal worth into exchange value, and in place of numberless indefeasible chartered freedoms, it has set up that single, unconscionable freedom -- free trade. In one word, for exploitation, veiled by religious and political illusions, it has substituted naked, shameless, direct, brutal exploitation.” - Karl Marx

86. “Make not, when you work a deed of shame, The scoundrel's plea, 'My forbears did the same.” - Abu'l-Ala-Al-Ma'arri

87. “Hence the sterile, uninspiring futility of a great many theoretical discussions of ethics, and the resentment which many people feel towards such discussions: moral principles remain in their minds as floating abstractions, offering them a goal they cannot grasp and demanding that they reshape their souls in its image, thus leaving them with a burden of undefinable moral guilt.” - Ayn Rand

88. “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

89. “You honor yourself by acting with dignity and composure.” - Allan Lokos

90. “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.” - Dr. Albert Schweitzer

91. “In our tribunal, we look only at personal criminal responsibility in a very tightly defined, narrow way and we demand proof beyond a resonable doubt about the involvement of the individual. We do no have a mandate to establish the moral responsibility of those who saw things happen and did nothing, including people who might have had the capacity to stop the process and did nothing. But we have to be careful in thinking that just because we focus on individual criminal guilt we therefore absolve the community. The old distinctions are too simplistic when we move up the chain of command and witness the merging of the collectivity into the personae of these charismatic political and military leaders.'-Louise Arbour, Chief Prosecutor for International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia” - Erna Paris

92. “One might say that there is an "ethics barrier " a speed above which ethics can no longer exit. After that point the only remaining goal is to survive the immediate moment.” - Pekka Himanen

93. “What other agents then are there, which, at the same time that they are under the influence of man's direction, are susceptible of happiness? They are of two sorts: (1) Other human beings who are styled persons. (2) Other animals, which, on account of their interests having been neglected by the insensibility of the ancient jurists, stand degraded into the class of things... But is there any reason why we should be suffered to torment them? Not any that I can see. Are there any why we should not be suffered to torment them? Yes, several. The day has been, I grieve to say in many places it is not yet past, in which the greater part of the species, under the denomination of slaves, have been treated by the law exactly upon the same footing as, in England for example, the inferior races of animals are still. The day may come, when the rest of the animal creation may acquire those rights which never could have been withholden from them but by the hand of tyranny. The French have already discovered that the blackness of the skin is no reason why a human being should be abandoned without redress to the caprice of a tormentor. It may come one day to be recognized, that the number of the legs, the villosity of the skin, or the termination of the os sacrum, are reasons equally insufficient for abandoning a sensitive being to the same fate. What else is it that should trace the insuperable line? Is it the faculty of reason, or, perhaps, the faculty of discourse? But a full-grown horse or dog is beyond comparison a more rational, as well as a more conversable animal, than an infant of a day, or a week, or even a month, old. But suppose the case were otherwise, what would it avail? the question is not, Can they reason? nor, Can they talk? but, Can they suffer? Why should the law refuse its protection to any sensitive being? The time will come when humanity will extend its mantle over everything which breathes.” - Jeremy Bentham

94. “Even a purely moral act that has no hope of any immediate and visible political effect can gradually and indirectly, over time, gain in political significance.” - Vaclav Havel

95. “Ethical principles stand above the existence of the nation and that by adhering to these principles an individual belongs to the community of all those who share, who have shared, and who will share this belief.” - Erich Fromm

96. “With the death of what Sydney Smith described as rational religon and the proponents of what remains sending out such confusing and uncertain messages, all civilised people have to be ethicists. We must work out our own salvation with diligence based on what we believe.” - P.D. James

97. “There’s such a thing as being irritatingly ethical,” said Eldric. “That’s you, right now.” That’s a pleasant change. Witches are rarely accused of being irritatingly ethical.“I’ve swigged.” I handed the bottle to Eldric. “Or is it swug?” “Swug,” said Eldric. “It is in bad-boy circles, at least.” He swug. “It tastes much better outside church.” “It’s the picnic principle,” I said. “Things taste better outdoors. And if it’s a forbidden thing, so much the better.” - Franny Billingsley

98. “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

99. “Pod kvazi-mitskim totalitetom tehničke racionalnosti prijeti nam inteligencija bez patosa, inteligencija kojoj nije potreban nikakav jezik koji ima svoj vlastiti smisao jer ionako sve funkcionira bez bilo kakvog proturječja; ta inteligencija ne zna za spomen jer nije ugrožena nikakvim zaboravom: čovjek kao kompjuterizirana inteligencija bez osjetljivosti na patnju i bez morala, ukratko: čovjek kao rapsodija nedužnosti jednoga glatko funkcionirajućeg stroja. Treba li doista to biti čovjek nakon smrti čovjeka?” - Johann Baptist Metz

100. “To give preference to the life of a being simply because that being is a member of our species would put us in the same position as racists who give preference to those who are members of their race.” - Peter Singer

101. “There has to be a cut-off somewhere between the freedom of expression and a graphically explicit free-for-all.” - E.A. Bucchianeri

102. “What one generation finds ridiculous, the next accepts; and the third shudders when it looks back on what the first did.” - Peter Singer

103. “The answer is that there is no good answer. So as parents, as doctors, as judges, and as a society, we fumble through and make decisions that allow us to sleep at night--because morals are more important than ethics, and love is more important than law.” - Jodi Picoult

104. “I don’t want to accidentally end up looking back on my life to find that I’m ashamed of myself, I want to live a life I can be proud of.” - Alice Bag

105. “Blessedness is not the reward of virtue, but virtue itself.” - Baruch Spinoza

106. “Since I was a small girl, I have lived inside this cottage, shelted by its roof and walls. I have known of people suffering—I have not been blind to them in the way that privilege allows, the way my own husband and now my daughter are blind. It is a statement of fact and not a judgement to say Charlie and Ella’s minds aren’t oriented in that direction; in a way, it absolves them, whereas the unlucky have knocked on the door of my consciousness, they have emerged from the forest and knocked many times over the course of my life, and I have only occasionally allowed them entry. I’ve done more than nothing and much less than I could have. I have laid inside, beneath a quilt on a comfortable couch, in a kind of reverie, and when I heard the unlucky outside my cottage, sometimes I passed them coins or scraps of food, and sometimes I ignored them altogether; if I ignored them, they had no choice but to walk back into the woods, and when they grew weak or got lost or were circled by wolves, I pretended I couldn’t hear them calling my name.” - Curtis Sittenfeld

107. “What interests me, personally, is work which in some way, speaks the truth to power…I don’t think we speak the truth to power for power’s ear, but for the ear and the imagination of future generations, who would seek to live in a world free from the malign and self-serving influence of those who wield it.” - Irvine Welsh

108. “Each of us lives with a sword over his head.There are those who can ignore its shadow and those who cannot. Those who cannot are not necessarily better than those who can. But they are the creators of the special myth of their time, because any myth is the creation of the very few who cannot bear reality.” - Murray Kempton

109. “Every social ethic is doomed to failure if it is blind to personal responsibility" (The Ten Commandments, 10).” - J. Douma

110. “I don't believe vegans (or vegetarians) who still get their (packaged, preservative/chemical-ridden) food from industrial food systems have any righteous ground to stand on, nor do I think a deep look at the sentient life of plants or the true environmental impact of agriculture permits them any comfortable distance from cruelty. Everything in this world eats something else to survive, and that something else, whether running on blood or chlorophyll, would always rather continue to live rather than become sustenance for another. No animal wants to be penned up and milked, or caged and harvested, and you've never seen plants growing in regimented lines of their own accord.” - Brian Awehali

111. “War as a moral metaphor is limited, limiting, and dangerous. By reducing the choices of action to “a war against” whatever-it-is, you divide the world into Me or Us (good) and Them or It (bad) and reduce the ethical complexity and moral richness of our life to Yes/No, On/Off.” - Ursula K. Le Guin

112. “In Mere Christianity, C. S. Lewis argues that human beings cannot be truly good or moral without faith in God and without submis- sion to the will of Christ. Unfortunately, Lewis does not provide any actual data for his assertions. They are nothing more than the mild musings of a wealthy British man, pondering the state of humanity’s soul between his sips of tea. Had Lewis actually famil- iarized himself with real human beings of the secular sort, per- haps sat and talked with them, he would have had to reconsider this notion. As so many apostates explained to me, morality is most certainly possible beyond the confines of faith. Can people be good without God? Can a moral orientation be sustained and developed outside of a religious context? The answer to both of these questions is a resounding yes.” - Phil Zuckerman

113. “Every skill and every inquiry, and similarly every action and rational choice, is thought to aim at some good; and so the good had been aptly described as that at which everything aims.” - Aristotle

114. “Gray is not a substitute for black and white. You don’t bump into people without saying you’re sorry. When you shake hands, it’s supposed to mean something. If someone is in trouble, you reach out.” - Jon Huntsman

115. “Is it possible that future generations will regard our present agribuisness and eating practices in much the same way we now view Nero's entertainments or Mengele's experiments? My own initial reaction is that such a comparison is hysterical, extreme - and yet the reason it seems extreme to me appears to be that I believe animals are less morally important than human behings; and when it comes to defending such a belief, even to myself, I have to acknowledge that (a) I have an obvious selfish interest in this belief, since I like to eat certain kinds of animals and want to be able to keep doing it, and (b) I haven't succeeded in working out any sort of personal ethical system in which the belief is truly defensible instead of just selfishly convenient.” - David Foster Wallace

116. “Where there is not community, trust, respect, ethical behavior are difficult for the young to learn and for the old to maintain.” - Robert K. Greenleaf

117. “Deplorable practices adopted during the last century were repeatedly declared necessary if regrettable in order to win the war. Oddly enough, we've yet to win. You'd think somebody would have asked before this why the regrettable but necessary measures haven't actually produced the promised results.” - Jack Campbell

118. “Principles are what people have instead of God.To be a Christian means among other things to be willing if necessary to sacrifice even your highest principles for God's or your neighbour's sake the way a Christian pacifist must be willing to pick up a baseball bat if there's no other way to stop a man from savagely beating a child.Jesus didn't forgive his executioners on principle but because in some unimaginable way he was able to love them.'Principle' is an even duller word than 'Religion'.” - Frederick Buechner

119. “Seek not that your sons and your daughters should not see visions, should not dream dreams; seek that they should see true visions, that they should dream noble dreams. Such out-going of the imagination is one with aspiration, and will do more to elevate above what is low and vile than all possible inculcations of morality.” - George MacDonald

120. “Men with power had the responsibility to know what was best, and they so rarely did.” - Beck Sherman

121. “How little we really know about the life all around us. Would we be so cavalier and ruthless with it if we understood it better?” - William Longgood

122. “Can we be sure that they are incapable of the feelings or sentiments that are believed to place them on a lower scale than humans? Do we deny sensitivity to all of the so-called lower orders to blunt, protect, and, ultimately, deny our own? We will see that bees can grieve over teh loss of a queen, sound war cries or hum with contentment; they can be angry, docile, ferocious, playful, aggressive, appear happy, or utter pitiful sounds of distress. are these not emotions akin to ours, merely expressed differently?” - William Longgood

123. “Une éthique véritablement socialiste, c'est-à-dire qui cherche la justice sans supprimer la liberté, qui impose aux individus des charges mais sans abolir l'individualité, se trouvera fort embarrassée par les problèmes que pose la condition de la femme.” - Simone de Beauvoir

124. “Having knowledge of an unethical act and allowing it to continue can spread a contagion that can affect multiple beings in society” - Bertrand Russell

125. “A father acts on behalf of his children by working, providing, intervening, struggling, and suffering for them. In so doing, he really stands in their place. He is not an isolated individual, but incorporates the selves of several people in his own self. Every attempt to live as if he were alone is a denial of the fact that he is actually responsible. He cannot escape the responsibility, which is his because he is a father. This reality refutes the fictitious notion that the isolated individual is the agent of all ethical behavior. It is not the isolated individual but the responsible person who is the proper agent to be considered in ethical reflection.” - Dietrich Bonhoeffer

126. “The limitation of the ethical phenomenon to its place and time does not imply its rejection but, on the contrary, its validation. One does not use canons to shoot sparrows.” - Dietrich Bonhoeffer

127. “لقد حدد رسول الإسلام الغاية الأولى من بعثته، والمنهاج المبين في دعوته بقوله إنما بعثت لأتمم مكارم الأخلاق” - محمد الغزالي

128. “ethics is not about platitudes, let alone tautologies, logic or mathematics, but about difficult choices - dilemmas.” - Martin Cohen

129. “There are already plenty of people who will take a firm stand on the need to be competely impartial between right and wrong.” - Martin Cohen

130. “A spirit of license makes a man refuse to commit himself to any standards. The right time is the way he sets his watch. The yardstick has the number of inches that he wills it to have. Liberty becomes license, and unbounded license leads to unbounded tyranny. When society reaches this stage, and there is no standard of right and wrong outside of the individual himself, then the individual is defenseless against the onslaught of cruder and more violent men who proclaim their own subjective sense of values. Once my idea of morality is just as good as your idea of morality, then the morality that is going to prevail is the morality that is stronger.” - Fulton J. Sheen

131. “Dabei wissen wir doch:Auch der Hass gegen die NiedrigkeitVerzerrt die Züge.Auch der Zorn über das UnrechtMacht die Stimme heiser. Ach, wirDie wir den Boden bereiten wollten für FreundlichkeitKonnten selber nicht freundlich sein.” - Bertolt Brecht

132. “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

133. “Human beings are never to be treated as a means but always as ends.” - Immanuel Kant

134. “My biggest problem with modernity may lie in the growing separation of the ethical and the legal” - Nassim Nicholas Taleb

135. “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

136. “Would you agree," he said, "that man's sole duty is to produce as much pleasure as possible?""Only if the pleasure produced is equivalent to the diminution of pain." My father crossed his arms. "And only if one man's pleasure is as important as any other's.” - Susan Hubbard

137. “The laws of men are not infallible.” - Wayne Gerard Trotman

138. “I should say that there ought to be no war except religious war. If war is irreligious, it is immoral. No man ought ever to fight at all unless he is prepared to put his quarrel before that invisible Court of Arbitration with which all religion is concerned. Unless he thinks he is vitally, eternally, cosmically in the right, he is wrong to fire off a pocket-pistol.” - G.K. Chesterton

139. “We encounter God in the face of a stranger. That, I believe, is the Hebrew Bible’s single greatest and most counterintuitive contribution to ethics. God creates difference; therefore it is in one-who-is-different that we meet god. Abraham encounters God when he invites three strangers into his tent.” - Jonathan Sacks

140. “I cannot kill someone, he thought.” - Lois Lowry

141. “The answer can't be found in books - or be solved by bringing it to other people. Not unless you want to remain a child all your life. You've got to find the answer inside you - feel the right thing to do. Charlie, you've got to learn to trust yourself” - Daniel Keyes

142. “One can reach the gates of hell just as easily by short steps as by large.” - Douglas Preston