Philosophy & Thought: Ethics & Morality Quotes

Similar topics:Deep Free Will & Fate Reason & Logic Truth Wisdom

"The martyr sacrifices themselves entirely in vain. Or rather, not in vain; for they make the selfish more selfish, the lazy more lazy, the narrow narrower"

Florence Nightingale, Activist

"It is sometimes necessary to lie damnably in the interests of the nation"

Hilaire Belloc, Poet

Hilaire Belloc

"You can't take back an act you were able to think"

Friedrich Durrenmatt, Author

Friedrich Durrenmatt

"There are thoughts we must not think"

Friedrich Durrenmatt, Author

Friedrich Durrenmatt

"It is easy to kill when you don't see your victim"

Friedrich Durrenmatt, Author

Friedrich Durrenmatt

"The 'morality of compromise' sounds contradictory. Compromise is usually a sign of weakness, or an admission of defeat. Strong men don't compromise, it is said, and principles should never be compromised"

Andrew Carnegie, Businessman

Andrew Carnegie

"In some sort of crude sense, which no vulgarity, no humor, no overstatement can quite extinguish, the physicists have known sin; and this is a knowledge which they cannot lose"

J. Robert Oppenheimer, Physicist

J. Robert Oppenheimer

"So long as we have failed to eliminate any of the causes of human despair, we do not have the right to try to eliminate those means by which man tries to cleanse himself of despair"

Antonin Artaud, Dramatist

Antonin Artaud

"I am saying pornography hurts anyone who reads it, garbage in, garbage out"

Jerry Falwell, Clergyman

Jerry Falwell

"A human being fashions his consequences as surely as he fashions his goods or his dwelling, his goods or his dwelling. Nothing that he says, thinks, or does is without consequences"

Norman Cousins, Author

"Remorse is virtue's root; its fair increase are fruits of innocence and blessedness"

William C. Bryant, Poet

"No tendency is quite so strong in human nature as the desire to lay down rules of conduct for other people"

William Howard Taft, President

"Cynicism is intellectual treason"

Norman Cousins, Author

"Just as there is no loss of basic energy in the universe, so no thought or action is without its effects, present or ultimate, seen or unseen, felt or unfelt"

Norman Cousins, Author

"I do not believe we can blame genetics for adultery, homosexuality, dishonesty and other character flaws"

Jerry Falwell, Clergyman

Jerry Falwell

"Real genius of moral insight is a motor which will start any engine"

Edmund Wilson, Critic

Edmund Wilson

"Evil, by definition, is that which endangers the good, and the good is what we perceive as a value"

Konrad Lorenz, Scientist

Konrad Lorenz

"Most of the vices and mortal sins condemned today correspond to inclinations that were purely adaptive, or at least harmless in primitive man"

Konrad Lorenz, Scientist

Konrad Lorenz

"It is an accepted commonplace in psychology that the spiritual level of people acting as a crowd is far lower than the mean of each individual's intelligence or morality"

Christian Lous Lange, Politician

Christian Lous Lange

"The world is not dialectical - it is sworn to extremes, not to equilibrium, sworn to radical antagonism, not to reconciliation or synthesis. This is also the principle of evil"

Jean Baudrillard, Sociologist

Jean Baudrillard

"Goodness, armed with power, is corrupted; and pure love without power is destroyed"

Reinhold Niebuhr, Theologian

"Evil is not to be traced back to the individual, but to the collective behavior of humanity"

Reinhold Niebuhr, Theologian

"All human sin seems so much worse in its consequences than in its intentions"

Reinhold Niebuhr, Theologian

"That only is a disgrace to a man which he has deserved to suffer"

Phaedrus, Poet

Phaedrus

"Everyone is bound to bear patiently the results of his own example"

Phaedrus, Poet

Phaedrus

"Means must be subsidiary to ends and to our desire for dignity and value"

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Architect

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

"Before I would hurt a child, I would slit my wrists"

Michael Jackson, Musician

"I don't think any one person, whether artist or not, has been given permission by anyone to put the responsibility of the way things are on anyone else"

Robert Rauschenberg, Artist

Robert Rauschenberg

"We belabour, I think, under a very heavy crust of consumerism really"

Emma Thompson, Actress

Emma Thompson

"We are selfish when we are exclusively or predominantly concerned with the good for ourselves. We are altruistic when we are exclusively or predominantly concerned with the good of others"

Mortimer Adler, Philosopher

"Is it hard for the reader to believe that suicides are sometimes committed to forestall the committing of murder? There is no doubt of it. Nor is there any doubt that murder is sometimes committed to avert suicide"

Karl A. Menninger, Psychologist

Karl A. Menninger

"But whether it be dream or truth, to do well is what matters. If it be truth, for truth's sake. If not, then to gain friends for the time when we awaken"

Pedro Calderon de la Barca, Dramatist

"There is nothing on earth divine except humanity"

Walter Savage Landor, Poet

Walter Savage Landor

"Goodness does not more certainly make men happy than happiness makes them good"

Walter Savage Landor, Poet

Walter Savage Landor

"A man's vanity tells him what is honor, a man's conscience what is justice"

Walter Savage Landor, Poet

Walter Savage Landor

"Most of us really aren't horribly unique. There are 6 billion of us. Put 'em all in one room and very few would stand out as individuals. So maybe we ought to think of worth in terms of our ability to get along as a part of nature, rather than being the lords over nature"

Herbert Simon, Scientist

Herbert Simon

"Every sect is a moral check on its neighbour. Competition is as wholesome in religion as in commerce"

Walter Savage Landor, Poet

Walter Savage Landor

"Consult duty, not events"

Walter Savage Landor, Poet

Walter Savage Landor

"Compassion has no place in the natural order of the world which operates on the basis of necessity. Compassion opposes this order and is therefore best thought of as being in some way supernatural"

John Berger, Artist

John Berger

"The people of the future will say, meat-eaters in disgust and regard us in the same way that we regard cannibals and cannibalism"

Dennis Weaver, Actor

Dennis Weaver

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