Selected ethics quotes

1. False words are not only evil in themselves, but they infect the soul with evil.

2. False words are not only evil in themselves, but they infect the soul with evil.

3. Reason well from the beginning and then there will never be any need to look back with confusion and doubt.

4. If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion.

5. It is necessary to help others, not only in our prayers, but in our daily lives. If we find we cannot help others, the least we can do is to desist from harming them.

6. Follow the three Rs: Respect for self, Respect for others and Responsibility for all your actions.

7. Maybe the Dalai Lama is the only person who is totally honest, and even with him, he's skillful not to hurt anybody. He's skillful.

8. No snowflake in an avalanche ever feels responsible.

9. A good picture is equivalent to a good deed.

10. Conscience is a man's compass.

11. Hope lies to mortals And most believe her, But man's deceiver Was never mine.

12. The Jews are the living embodiment of the minority, the constant reminder of what duties societies owe their minorities, whoever they might be.

13. I believe it is an established maxim in morals that he who makes an assertion without knowing whether it is true or false, is guilty of falsehood; and the accidental truth of the assertion, does not justify or excuse him.

14. Will springs from the two elements of moral sense and self-interest.

15. I have always found that mercy bears richer fruits than strict justice.

16. The man who barely abstains from violating either the person, or the estate, or the reputation of his neighbours, has surely very little positive merit. He fulfils, however, all the rules of what is peculiarly called justice, and does every thing which his equals can with propriety force him to do, or which they can punish him for not doing. We may often fulfil all the rules of justice by sitting still and doing nothing.

17. Mercy to the guilty is cruelty to the innocent.

18. There's not a single thing on offer in this all-too-temporary world for which you should ever sell your soul.

19. Either you can subscribe to the American creed which says that God endowed us with our rights, or you can subscribe to the abortion creed which says that those rights are the consequences of our mother's will.

20. How does it secure the blessings of liberty to our posterity, to those generations yet unborn, to kill them, aborting them in the womb?

21. Harden our hearts to the innocents in the womb, and we have hardened our hearts to the need for compassion, and mercy, and fellow-feeling, and charity, and decency in this world.

22. Every leader, and every regime, and every movement, and every organization that steps across the line to terrorism must be banished from the discourse of civilized human life.

23. I will stand against those who see terrorism when Americans die, but who see suicide bombers who kill Israelis and believe that that is just part of the negotiating process.

24. A callous disregard for the claims of innocent human life is the heart and soul of the evil of terrorism.

25. I am amazed that Congressmen can pass a bill imposing severe penalties on anyone who burns the American flag, whereas they are responsible for burning that for which the flag stands: the United States as a territory, as a people, and as a biological manifestation. That is an example of our perennial confusion of symbols with realities.

26. Technology is destructive only in the hands of people who do not realize that they are one and the same process as the universe.

27. Time will prolong time, and life will serve life. In this field that is both limited and bulging with possibilities, everything to himself, except his lucidity, seems unforeseeable to him. What rule, then, could emanate from that unreasonable order? The only truth that might seem instructive to him is not formal: it comes to life and unfolds in men. The absurd mind cannot so much expect ethical rules at the end of its reasoning as, rather, illustrations and the breath of human lives.

28. Analysis of rebellion leads at least to the suspicion that, contrary to the postulates of contemporary thought, a human nature does exist, as the Greeks believed. Why rebel if there is nothing permanent in oneself worth preserving? ... Rebellion, though apparently negative, since it creates nothing, is profoundly positive in that it reveals the part of man which must always be defended.

29. Does the end justify the means? That is possible. But what will justify the end? To that question, which historical thought leaves pending, rebellion replies: the means.

30. If you keep on excusing, you eventually give your blessing to the slave camp, to cowardly force, to organized executioners, to the cynicism of great political monsters; you finally hand over your brothers.

31. I agree with your remark about loving your enemy as far as actions are concerned. But for me the cognitive basis is the trust in an unrestricted causality. 'I cannot hate him, because he must do what he does.' That means for me more Spinoza than the prophets.

32. If I would follow your advice and Jesus could perceive it, he, as a Jewish teacher, surely would not approve of such behavior.

33. It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity.

34. Perfection of means and confusion of goals seem - in my opinion - to characterize our age.

35. Technological progress is like an axe in the hands of a pathological criminal.

36. The most important human endeavor is the striving for morality in our actions. Our inner balance and even our very existence depend on it. Only morality in our actions can give beauty and dignity to life.

37. The release of atomic energy has not created a new problem. It has merely made more urgent the necessity of solving an existing one.

38. I don't think that we necessarily lie. I mean, we make our living by pretending that we're someone else. I don't tell tall tales. I always tell the truth.

39. Any religion or philosophy which is not based on a respect for life is not a true religion or philosophy.

40. The quiet conscience is an invention of the devil.

41. I do not believe in the doctrine of the greatest good of the greatest number. The only real, dignified, human doctrine is the greatest good of all.

42. An eye for an eye only leads to more blindness.

43. It is astonishing what force, purity, and wisdom it requires for a human being to keep clear of falsehoods.

44. Let no one dare to call another mad who is not himself willing to rank in the same class for every perversion and fault of judgment. Let no one dare aid in punishing another as criminal who is not willing to suffer the penalty due to his own offenses.

45. It is an open question whether any behavior based on fear of eternal punishment can be regarded as ethical or should be regarded as merely cowardly.

46. Eugenics, which had started long before my time, had once been defined as including free love and prevention of conception... Recently it had cropped up again in the form of selective breeding.

47. The third group [of society] are those irresponsible and reckless ones having little regard for the consequences of their acts, or whose religious scruples prevent their exercising control over their numbers. Many of this group are diseased, feeble-minded, and are of the pauper element dependent upon the normal and fit members of society for their support. There is no doubt in the minds of all thinking people that the procreation of this group should be stopped.

48. Eugenic sterilization is an urgent need ... We must prevent multiplication of this bad stock.

49. Constitutions have to be written on hearts, not just paper.

50. You don't tell deliberate lies, but sometimes you have to be evasive.

51. War is pillage versus resistance and if illusions of magnitude could be transmuted into ideals of magnanimity, peace might be realized.

52. Honesty is the best policy - when there is money in it.

53. The only reason I'm in Hollywood is that I don't have the moral courage to refuse the money.

54. God wants man to fulfill his commands as a human being and with the quality peculiar to human beings.

55. There are three principles in a man's being and life, the principle of thought, the principle of speech, and the principle of action. The origin of all conflict between me and my fellow-men is that I do not say what I mean and I don't do what I say.

56. Agriculture is now a motorized food industry, the same thing in its essence as the production of corpses in the gas chambers and the extermination camps, the same thing as blockades and the reduction of countries to famine, the same thing as the manufacture of hydrogen bombs.

57. When authorities warn you of the sinfulness of sex, there is an important lesson to be learned. Do not have sex with the authorities.

58. Conduct is three-fourths of our life and its largest concern.

59. We venture to make the assertion that there is but one sin: IGNORANCE, and but one salvation: APPLIED KNOWLEDGE.

60. By sealing our work with our blood, we may see at least the bright dawn of universal happiness.

61. Is it to be thought unreasonable that the people, in atonement for wrongs of a century, demand the vengeance of a single day?

62. Again, it may be said, that to love justice and equality the people need no great effort of virtue; it is sufficient that they love themselves.

63. In order to be profoundly dishonest, a person must have one of two qualities: either he is unscrupulously ambitious, or he is unswervingly egocentric.

64. One isn't necessarily born with courage, but one is born with potential. Without courage, we cannot practice any other virtue with consistency. We can't be kind, true, merciful, generous, or honest.

65. The honorary duty of a human being is to love.

66. To love God in the most practical way is to love our fellow beings. If we feel for others in the same way as we feel for our own dear ones, we love God.

67. Freedom, morality, and the human dignity of the individual consists precisely in this; that he does good not because he is forced to do so, but because he freely conceives it, wants it, and loves it.

68. A novel that does not uncover a hitherto unknown segment of existence is immoral. Knowledge is the novel's only morality.

69. So the question is, do corporate executives, provided they stay within the law, have responsibilities in their business activities other than to make as much money for their stockholders as possible? And my answer to that is, no they do not.

70. Men, I am not ordering you to attack. I am ordering you to die. In the time that it takes us to die, other forces and commanders can come and take our place.

71. Religion is an important institution. A nation without religion cannot survive. Yet it is also very important to note that religion is a link between Allah and the individual believer. The brokerage of the pious cannot be permitted. Those who use religion for their own benefit are detestable. We are against such a situation and will not allow it. Those who use religion in such a manner have fooled our people; it is against just such people that we have fought and will continue to fight. Know that whatever conforms to reason, logic, and the advantages and needs of our people conforms equally to Islam. If our religion did not conform to reason and logic, it would not be the perfect religion, the final religion.

72. No matter how rich and prosperous, a nation without independence, cannot be subject to any behaviour before the humanity, at a higher level than serving.

73. A mistake is not something to be determined after the fact, but in the light of the information until that point.

74. If you live among wolves you have to act like a wolf.

75. Cursed be all those on land and sea who eat their fill, cursed be all those who starve yet raise no hand in protest, cursed be all the bread, the wine, the meat which day by day descends deep in the entrails of the exploited man and turns not into freedom's cry, the murderer's ruthless knife!

76. Human beings will find a balanced situation when they do good things not because God says it, but because they feel like doing them.

77. Real integrity is doing the right thing, knowing that nobody's going to know whether you did it or not.

78. My hands are clean, but not because I wasn't prepared to bloody them.

79. It is annoying to be honest to no purpose.

80. A man is sorry to be honest for nothing.

81. All things may corrupt when minds are prone to evil.

82. An evil life is a kind of death.

83. Cunning leads to knavery. It is but a step from one to the other, and that very slippery. Only lying makes the difference; add that to cunning, and it is knavery.

84. Had I not sinned what would there be for you to pardon. My fate has given you the opportunity for mercy.

85. Men do not value a good deed unless it brings a reward.

86. The high-spirited man may indeed die, but he will not stoop to meanness. Fire, though it may be quenched, will not become cool.

87. The number of laws is constantly growing in all countries and, owing to this, what is called crime is very often not a crime at all, for it contains no element of violence or harm.

88. We don't eat anything that has to be killed for us. We've been through a lot and we've reached a stage where we really value life.

89. I don't think there's anything exceptional or noble in being philanthropic. It's the other attitude that confuses me.

90. If there is any test that can be applied to movies, it's that the good ones never make you feel virtuous.

91. Belief is involuntary; nothing involuntary is meritorious or reprehensible. A man ought not to be considered worse or better for his belief.

92. Revenge is the naked idol of the worship of a semi-barbarous age.

93. Every man, in proportion to his virtue, considers himself, with respect to the great community of mankind, as the steward and guardian of their interests in the property which he chances to possess. Every man, in proportion to his wisdom, sees the manner in which it is his duty to employ the resources which the consent of mankind has intrusted to his discretion.

94. Tragedy, for me, is not a conflict between right and wrong, but between two different kinds of right.

95. Thus rhetoric, it seems, is a producer of persuasion for belief, not for instruction in the matter of right and wrong ... And so the rhetorician's business is not to instruct a law court or a public meeting in matters of right and wrong, but only to make them believe.

96. But tell me, this physician of whom you were just speaking, is he a moneymaker, an earner of fees, or a healer of the sick?

97. Mankind censure injustice fearing that they may be the victims of it, and not because they shrink from committing it.

98. And we must beg Homer and the other poets not to be angry if we strike out these and similar passages, not because they are unpoetical, or unattractive to the popular ear, but because the greater the poetical charm in them, the less are they meet for the ears of boys and men who are meant to be free, and who should fear slavery more than death.

99. Again, truth should be highly valued; if, as we were saying, a lie is useless to the gods, and useful only as a medicine to men, then the use of such medicines should be restricted to physicians; private individuals have no business with them.

100. Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws.