Philosophy & Thought: Ethics & Morality Quotes

"It is a proof of our natural bias to evil, that gain is slower and harder than loss in all things good; but in all things bad, getting is quicker and easier than getting rid of"

Augustus Hare, Writer

"Crimes sometimes shock us too much; vices almost always too little"

Augustus Hare, Writer

"Only when the voice of duty is silent, or when it has already spoken, may we allowably think of the consequences of a particular action"

Augustus Hare, Writer

"Well, my definition of a tragedy is a clash between right and right"

Amos Oz, Writer

"How sick one gets of being "good," how much I should respect myself if I could burst out and make everyone wretched for twenty-four hours; embody selfishness"

Alice James, Writer

"It is with flowers as with moral qualities; the bright are sometimes poisonous; but, I believe, never the sweet"

Augustus Hare, Writer

"We hold that what one man cannot morally do, a million men cannot morally do, and government, representing many millions of men, cannot do"

Auberon Herbert, Philosopher

"Physical pain, however great, ends in itself and falls away like dry husks from the mind, whilst moral discords and nervous horrors sear the soul"

Alice James, Writer

"Over the past few years, many of us have increasingly begun to question the direction and meaning of our society as it has developed over the past several centuries"

Alex Campbell, Politician

"As a consequence, progress has come to mean simply more power, more profit, more productivity, more paper prosperity, all of which are convertible into standards concerned only with size or magnitude rather than quality or excellence"

Alex Campbell, Politician

"I frankly don't care if you agree with my stand on abortion. I take that stand because no other stand is consistent with decent principles, and no other standard is consistent with the will of God"

Alan Keyes, Politician

"Willing or preferring is the same with respect to good and evil, that judging is with respect to truth or falsehood"

Anthony Collins, Philosopher

"However, if we examine the Canadian scene closely enough, we can see signs of this physical and spiritual rot settling into a number of our Canadian urban centres with a troubling spill-over into many of our more rural areas"

Alex Campbell, Politician

"Unfortunately, religion, like patriotism, is easy to misuse for political purposes"

Kjell Magne Bondevik, Statesman

"The goodness of a thing created is the perfection of its fitness for the use which it serves. Now that use is either particular or universal"

William Ames, Philosopher

"For this is our most perfect duty and yet least known to us by nature: Whatever we conceive or will should be joined with the good of our neighbor"

William Ames, Philosopher

"I wanted to explore the values that are at work, underpinning my life"

Sidney Poitier, Actor

"It may be said that modern Europe, with teachers who inform it that its realist instincts are beautiful, acts ill and honors what is ill"

Julien Benda, Philosopher

"And History will smile to think that this is the species for which Socrates and Jesus Christ died"

Julien Benda, Philosopher

"Liberal capitalism is not at all the Good of humanity. Quite the contrary; it is the vehicle of savage, destructive nihilism"

Alain Badiou, Philosopher

"Evil is the interruption of a truth by the pressure of particular or individual interests"

Alain Badiou, Philosopher

"Humanity could only have survived and flourished if it held social and personal values that transcended the urges of the individual, embodying selfish desires - and these stem from the sense of a transcendent good"

Arthur Peacocke, Theologian

"It is a very unusual sector, and the one thing I would ask of them is to understand that, for most of them, one-third of their films are being financed by the taxpayer, and that carries huge accountability and responsibility"

Estelle Morris, Politician

"The greatest art of a politician is to render vice serviceable to the cause of virtue"

Henry Bolingbroke, Royalty

"I personally believe we were put here to build and not to destroy"

Red Skelton, Comedian

"I have to do what's right"

Herve Villechaize, Actor

"To rest satisfied with existing evils, as if we could do nothing, is not obedience; but neither is it obedience to imitate the actions of the apostles"

John Nelson Darby, Clergyman

"If it came to saving the life of one priest or sacrificing the life of an entire congregation, the church would save the life of the priest. Which is backwards, of course"

Rob Walton, Athlete

"The custom of sinning takes away the sense of it, the course of the world takes away the shame of it"

John Owen, Theologian

"The Pythagoreans degrade impious men into brutes and, if one is to believe Empedocles, even into plants"

Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, Writer

"The maxim, that governments ought to train the people in the way in which they should go, sounds well. But is there any reason for believing that a government is more likely to lead the people in the right way than the people to fall into the right way of themselves?"

Thomas Babington, Poet

"The highest proof of virtue is to possess boundless power without abusing it"

Thomas Babington, Poet

"There is not much that even the most socially responsible scientists can do as individuals, or even as a group, about the social consequences of their activities"

Eric Hobsbawm, Historian

"Look at our sorry plight: ignorance in our veins, at times we can sell conscience, feeling in the heart no pains"

Abdulla Qodiriy, Novelist

"Humans will not hesitate to lay down their own lives to rescue a child who had fallen onto the train tracks, yet are also perpetrators of appalling violence, like in Auschwitz"

Han Kang, Novelist

"I don't think that just because you're talented you can get away with everything"

Vicky Krieps, Actress

"People are more important than things; that men are more important than machines"

Lynden Oscar Pindling, Statesman

"Moral and political strength does not lie in imposition but in the unity of values, in shared coherence, and in collective virtue"

Xavier Espot Zamora, Minister

"A person's dignity is measured by labor, learning, and service, not by lineage or loud pride"

Abai Qunanbaiuly, Poet

"People with really weak characters cause an immense amount of suffering in the world. They destroy whole civilisations"

Bessie Head, Writer

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