Philosophy & Thought: Ethics & Morality Quotes

"I am in favor of stem-cell research. I am not in favor of creating new human embryos through cloning"

Mitt Romney, Politician

"The moral and spiritual aspects of both personal and international relationships have a practical bearing which so-called practical men deny"

Henry A. Wallace, Vice President

"Some of us learned in a school of philosophy which taught that all was for the common good and nothing for oneself and have never, in any case, regarded the pursuit of happiness as anything other than an aberration of the human spirit"

John Grierson, Director

"My personal view is that such total planning by the state is an absolute good and not simply a relative good... I do not myself think of the attitude I take as deriving from Marx - though this undoubtedly will be suggested - but from Fichte and Hegel"

John Grierson, Director

"A cynical, mercenary, demagogic press will in time produce a people as base as itself"

Joseph Pulitzer, Publisher

"All nations are more tolerant of their own mistakes and weaknesses than of the mistakes and weaknesses of others"

Arthur Hays Sulzberger, Publisher

"It may be a mistake, that man, in a state of nature, is more disposed to cruelty than courtesy"

Mercy Otis Warren, Playwright

"Abortion is the most vile evil committed in America"

Marjorie Taylor Greene, Politician

"The introduction of religious passion into politics is the end of honest politics, and the introduction of politics into religion is the prostitution of true religion"

Lord Hailsham, Politician

"Science attempts to analyze how things and people and animals behave; it has no concern whether this behavior is good or bad, is purposeful or not. But religion is precisely the quest for such answers: whether an act is right or wrong, good or bad, and why"

Warren Weaver, Scientist

"A human being has been given an intellect to make choices, and we know there are other food sources that do not require the killing of a creature that would protest being killed"

Mary Tyler Moore, Actress

"Just because scientists have the knowledge to do it, the technology to do it, and some may even have a financial motive or other incentive to do it, does not make it right"

Nathan Deal, Politician

"Political commercials encourage the deceptive, the destructive and the degrading"

John O'Toole, Politician

"The argument has been made in Congress that it is slippery slope, if you allow therapeutic, what people people are calling therapeutic cloning, then you will get reproductive cloning"

David Baltimore, Scientist

"Politics can be relatively fair in the breathing spaces of history; at its critical turning points there is no other rule possible than the old one, that the end justifies the means"

Arthur Koestler, Novelist

"In short, I'm not sure that the abortion problem can be solved by legislation. I think it can only be solved through moral persuasion"

Tony Campolo, Clergyman

"Science without respect for human life is degrading to us all and reflects a hollow and deceptive philosophy, a philosophy that we as a people should never condone"

Nathan Deal, Politician

"In our struggle to restrain the violence and contain the damage, we tend to forget that the human capacity for aggression is more than a monstrous defect, that it is also a crucial survival tool"

Katherine Dunn, Novelist

"Pretensions to moral superiority are devastatingly destructive"

Mary Douglas, Scientist

"Certainly it is wrong to be cruel to animals and the destruction of a whole species can be a great evil. The capacity for feelings of pleasure and pain and for the form of life of which animals are capable clearly impose duties of compassion and humanity in their case"

John Rawls, Educator

"Everything we do has consequences"

Dennis Potter, Dramatist

"A bad act done will fester and create in its own way. It's not only goodness that creates. Bad things create. They have their own yeast"

Dennis Potter, Dramatist

"Men are as we have always known them, neither better nor worse, from the hearts of rogues there springs a latent honesty, from the depths of honest men there emerges a brutish appetite - a thirst for extermination, a desire for blood"

Frederica Montseny, Politician

"It should seem, then, that the nature of society dictates another, a higher branch, whose superiority arises from its being the interested and natural conservator of the universal interest"

Ezra Stiles, Clergyman

"If people knew of ethics violations, they should have sent them to the Ethics Committee. If you think there was serious ethics violation that ought to be looked at, you don't hold it back for retaliatory purposes"

Barney Frank, Politician

"Perhaps my information hurt the Soviet Union more than it helped. I have no idea. It was not something I ever discussed with the KGB officers that I was dealing with"

Aldrich Ames, Criminal

"Modern morality and manners suppress all natural instincts, keep people ignorant of the facts of nature and make them fighting drunk on bogey tales"

Aleister Crowley, Critic

"We might not object to the statement that Lear deserved to suffer for his folly, selfishness and tyranny; but to assert that he deserved to suffer what he did suffer is to do violence not merely to language but to any healthy moral sense"

Andrew Coyle Bradley, Judge

"The Athenians are right to accept advice from anyone, since it is incumbent on everyone to share in that sort of excellence, or else there can be no city at all"

Protagoras, Philosopher

"I could never, ever have an abortion"

Brooke Shields, Actress

"I think you have to remember that Americans saw their purpose as so innately good that they could excuse the pain they would inflict on others to carry out those purposes. Because the purposes were so good, they would justify this pain we were inflicting on other people"

Neil Sheehan, Journalist

"I think the thing to remember, though, the next time you hear someone who is really certain that he is on the side of the angels, is that the idea of angels was created by human beings, who are famous for being frequently untrustworthy and occasional"

Jon Carroll, Journalist

"The novel is a penetrating study of morals and ethics"

Bille August, Director

"That which is striking and beautiful is not always good, but that which is good is always beautiful"

Ninon de L'Enclos, Author

"And in a democracy, when we say we're mad at what's going on, what we need to be saying is we're mad at ourselves"

Mike Lowry, Politician

"A man's sentiments are generally just and right, while it is second selfish thought which makes him trim and adopt some other view. The best reforms are worked out when sentiment operates, as it does in women, with the indignation of righteousness"

Leland Stanford, Businessman

"Just as it is true that a stream cannot rise above its source, so it is true that a national literature cannot rise above the moral level of the social conditions of the people from whom it derives its inspiration"

James Connolly, Politician

"Well may your heart believe the truths I tell; 'Tis virtue makes the bliss, where'er we dwell"

Wilkie Collins, Novelist

"I believe that my art gets across the point that I'm in this morality theater trying to help the underdog, and I'm speaking socially here, showing concern and making psychological and philosophical statements for the underdog"

Jeff Koons, Artist

"In any ethical situation, the thing you want least to do is probably the right action"

Jerry Pournelle, Journalist

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