Philosophy & Thought: Ethics & Morality Quotes

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

"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

"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 are times in history where a particular doctrine becomes a symbol of a greater problem"

Pat Robertson, Clergyman

"A man's conscience, like a warning line on the highway, tells him what he shouldn't do - but it does not keep him from doing it"

Frank Howard Clark, Writer

"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

"The ends must justify the means"

Matthew Prior, Poet

"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

"As somebody once said, we're not punished for our sins, we're punished by them"

Hugh Leonard, Dramatist

Hugh Leonard

"The motive power of democracy is love"

Henri Bergson, Philosopher

"Our moral traditions developed concurrently with our reason, not as its product"

Friedrich August von Hayek, Economist

"It seems to me that socialists today can preserve their position in academic economics merely by the pretense that the differences are entirely moral questions about which science cannot decide"

Friedrich August von Hayek, Economist

"I have arrived at the conviction that the neglect by economists to discuss seriously what is really the crucial problem of our time is due to a certain timidity about soiling their hands by going from purely scientific questions into value questions"

Friedrich August von Hayek, Economist

"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

"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 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

"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

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

Edmund Wilson, Critic

Edmund Wilson

"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

"If you think of paying court to the men in power, your eternal ruin is assured"

Stendhal, Writer

"Virtue is its own reward, and brings with it the truest and highest pleasure; but if we cultivate it only for pleasure's sake, we are selfish, not religious, and will never gain the pleasure, because we can never have the virtue"

John Henry Newman, Clergyman

"It is safest to be moderately base - to be flexible in shame, and to be always ready for what is generous, good, and just, when anything is to be gained by virtue"

Sydney Smith, Clergyman

Sydney Smith

"The fundamental issue is the moral issue"

David Attenborough, Journalist

David Attenborough

"They act as if they supposed that to be very sanguine about the general improvement of mankind is a virtue that relieves them from taking trouble about any improvement in particular"

John Morley, Statesman

John Morley

"He who hates vice hates men"

John Morley, Statesman

John Morley

"Men value things in three ways: as useful, as pleasant, or sources of pleasure, and as excellent, or as intrinsically admirable or honorable"

Mortimer Adler, Philosopher

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

Emma Thompson, Actress

Emma Thompson

"There are some faults so nearly allied to excellence that we can scarce weed out the vice without eradicating the virtue"

Oliver Goldsmith, Poet

"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

"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

"If slaughterhouses had glass walls, everyone would be a vegetarian"

Paul McCartney, Musician

"Honour sinks where commerce long prevails"

Oliver Goldsmith, Poet

"Conscience is a coward, and those faults it has not strength enough to prevent, it seldom has justice enough to accuse"

Oliver Goldsmith, Poet

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