Quotes about Ethics

Sin has many tools, but a lie is the handle which fits them all. (The autocrat of the breakfast-table)

The character of every act depends upon the circumstances in which it is done.

Beware of making your moral staple consist of the negative virtues.

Our morality seems to be only a check on the ultimate domination of force, just as our politeness is a check on the impulse of every pig to put his feet in the trough.

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

The power of choosing good and evil is within the reach of all.

Conscience is the chamber of justice.

For at this juncture, the West has cut itself off from its own Jewish and Christian roots—the faith, the ideas, the ethics and the way of life that made it the West. It now stands deeply divided, uncertain of its post-Christian identity, and with its dominance waning in the global era.

Thus a good man, though a slave, is free; but a wicked man, though a king, is a slave. For he serves, not one man alone, but, what is worse, as many masters as he has vices. ST. AUGUSTINE, CITY OF GOD

what matters for each of us is the adequacy and truth of what we come to believe is the meaning of life—and therefore the source from which we derive our sense of identity, purpose, ethics and community.

Hypocrisy is the homage that vice pays to virtue." Rochefoucauld's maxim

Either we may seek to conform our desires to the truth, which leads to conviction, or we may seek to conform the truth to our desires, which leads to evasion.