Quotes about Ethics

If we could only learn to look on evil as evil, whether it's clothed in filth or monotony or magnificence.

Until the great mobs could be educated into a moral sense, someone must cry: Thou shalt not!

Some men escape the grip. Maybe their wives have no social ambitions; maybe they've hit a sentence or two in a 'dangerous book' that pleased them; maybe they started on the treadmill as I did and were knocked off. Anyway, they're the congressmen you can't bribe, the Presidents who aren't politicians, the writers, speakers, scientists, statesmen who aren't just populate grab-bags for a half-dozen women and children.

It's essentially cleaner to be corrupt and rich than it is to be innocent and poor.

If one can't be a great artist or a great soldier, the next best thing is to be a great criminal.

When we tell little white lies, we become progressively color-blind. It is better to remain silent than to mislead.

Treat those who are good with goodness, and also treat those who are not good with goodness. Thus goodness is attained. Be honest to those who are honest, and be also honest to those who are not honest. Thus honesty is attained.

If I'm walking down the riverbank, and a man is drowning, even if I don't know how to swim very well, I feel this urge that the right thing to do is to try to save that person. Evolution would tell me exactly the opposite: preserve your DNA. Who cares about the guy who's drowning?

Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.

Perfection of moral virtue does not wholly take away the passions, but regulates them.

Good masters teach good doctrine, but that taught by evil masters is wholly evil.

The true greatness of a person, in my view, is evident in the way he or she treats those with whom courtesy and kindness are not required.