Quotes about Ethics

Dorian to Harry 'Don't, Harry. The soul is a terrible reality. It can be bought, and sold, and bartered away. It can be poisoned, or made perfect. There is a soul in each one of us. I know it.

We praise the banker that we may overdraw our account, and find good qualities in the highwayman in the hope that he may spare our pockets. I mean everything that I have said.

Do unto others as you would have others do unto you.

So let's obey the Golden Rule, and give unto others what we would have others give unto us, How? When? Where? The answer is: All the time, everywhere.

Goodness is the only investment that never fails.

Once I did bad and that I heard ever, twice I did good, but that I heard never.

We have all read the golden rule and the Sermon on the Mount. Our trouble is not ignorance, but inaction.

The so-called "right to privacy" of which so much is made in contemporary life is in very large measure merely a way of avoiding scrutiny in our wrongdoing.

And with respect to feelings that are inherently injurious and wrong, their strategy is not one of resisting them in the moment of choice but of living in such a way that they do not have such feelings at all, or at least do not have them in a degree that makes it hard to decide against them when appropriate.

The best physical, chemical, and other scientific knowledge will not tell us what to do and who to be.

The general human failing is to want what is right and important, but at the same time not to commit to the kind of life that will produce the action we know to be right and the condition we want to enjoy. This is the feature of human character that explains why the road to hell is paved with good intentions. We intend what is right, but we avoid the life that would make it reality.

In charting one's course in life, it is important never to forget that many things that cannot be called wrong or evil are nevertheless not good for us.