Philosophy & Thought: Ethics & Morality Quotes

Abdurrahman Wahid, Statesman

"Temptation is the fire that brings up the scum of the heart"

Thomas Boston, Clergyman

"What's natural and right is to go with the energy of how it all has to work together. What's natural and right is interconnectedness, not individualism. What is natural and right is respect for the system, not killing the system. What's natural and right is love"

Susan Powter, Celebrity

"I think vegetarianism is a crucial ethical choice for an individual and a society"

Bernhard Goetz, Engineer

"Goodness means the highest degree of popularity"

Heinrich Mann, Novelist

"Conscience that isn't hitched up to common sense is a mighty dangerous thing"

Margaret Deland, Novelist

"If it was necessary to tolerate in other people everything that one permits oneself, life would be unbearable"

Georges Courteline, Dramatist

"I suffer from Irish-Catholic guilt. Guilt is a good reality check. It keeps that 'do what makes you happy' thing in check"

Edward Burns, Actor

"Ward Churchill might be more valuable to the opponents of the academic left employed than unemployed. Above all, he can serve as a living window into the intellectual, moral, and political bankruptcy of the left"

Mort Kondracke, Journalist

"It's pretty sad when you have to choose between the lesser of two evils"

Meg White, Musician

"Science cannot resolve moral conflicts, but it can help to more accurately frame the debates about those conflicts"

Heinz R. Pagels, Physicist

"To destroy a standing crop goes against the soundest instincts of human nature"

Henry Cantwell Wallace, Politician

"On TV, the children can watch people murdering each other, which is a very unnatural thing, but they can't watch two people in the very natural process of making love. Now, really, that doesn't make any sense, does it?"

Sharon Tate, Actress

"Avarice, the sphincter of the heart"

Matthew Green, Poet

"We may draw good out of evil; we must not do evil that good may come"

Maria W. Chapman, Writer

"I'm saying that the moral climate within the ruling class in this country is not that different from the moral climate within the ruling class of Hitler's Germany"

David Clennon, Actor

"One must always be aware, to notice even though the cost of noticing is to become responsible"

Thylias Moss, Poet

"Let everyone regulate his conduct... by the golden rule of doing to others as in similar circumstances we would have them do to us, and the path of duty will be clear before him"

William Wilberforce, Politician

"They committed murder, it is true; but their situation may have rendered it inevitable"

Philip Hone, Politician

"I think to be driven to want to kill must be such a terrible burden"

Ruth Rendell, Writer

"It is a glorious thing to be indifferent to suffering, but only to one's own suffering"

Robert Staughton Lynd, Sociologist

"I'd love to be the first one to say this, but it automatically turns into - we all have those responsibilities that we ignore because we don't feel like they're ours"

Rosario Dawson, Actress

"Sympathy for victims is always counter-balanced by an equal and opposite feeling of resentment towards them"

Ben Elton, Comedian

"The pretended physical philosophy of modern days strips Man of all his moral attributes, or holds them of no account in the estimate of his origin and place in the created world"

Adam Sedgwick, Scientist

"I consider your conduct unethical and lousy"

Peter Arno, Cartoonist

"It occurred to me, when I was old enough to make rules of my own, that they should be fair and simple"

Moon Unit Zappa, Musician

"There are good characters and bad characters"

Matt Stone, Producer

"The level of discourse in this country is falling to a depth that cannot be sustained"

Martin Frost, Politician

"Self-sacrifice which denies common sense is not a virtue. It's a spiritual dissipation"

Margaret Deland, Novelist

"The question we all face is what sort of culture we will live in for the rest of our lives and then hand on to the next generation - one that embraces these most basic of values, or one that collapses because of their absence"

Tammy Bruce, Author

"It is considered a major sin to break a contract, if you agreed, especially with military situations"

John Walker Lindh, Criminal

"Television is not vulgar because people are vulgar; it is vulgar because people are similar in their prurient interests and sharply differentiated in their civilized concerns"

George Gilder, Writer

"In the one defence, briefly, we accept responsibility but deny that it was bad: in the other, we admit that it was bad but don't accept full, or even any, responsibility"

J. L. Austin, Philosopher

"Thus, the controversy about the Moral Majority arises not only from its views, but from its name - which, in the minds of many, seems to imply that only one set of public policies is moral and only one majority can possibly be right"

Edward Kennedy, Politician

"There is no sinfulness in the will and affections without some error in the understanding. All lusts which a natural man lives in are lusts of ignorance"

George Gillespie, Theologian

"You seem to think that the only genuine existence evil can have is conscious existence - that no one is evil unless he admits it to himself. I disagree"

Gene Wolfe, Writer

"Lenny Bruce is a very moral man trying to improve the world and trying to make audiences think"

Dorothy Kilgallen, Actress

"True valor, on virtue founded strong, meets all events alike"

David Mallet, Dramatist

"The type of fig leaf which each culture employs to cover its social taboos offers a twofold description of its morality. It reveals that certain unacknowledged behavior exists, and it suggests the form that such behavior takes"

Freda Adler, Educator

"Farming with live animals is a 7 day a week, legal form of slavery"

George Segal, Actor

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