Quotes about Ethics

You may choose to look the other way but you can never say again that you did not know.

Selfishness is one of the principal fruits of the corruption of human nature; and it is obvious that selfishness disposes us to over-rate our good qualities, and to overlook or extenuate our defects.

God Almighty has set before me two Great Objects: the supression of the Slave Trade and the Reformation of Manners.

The distemper of which, as a community, we are sick, should be considered rather as a moral than a political malady.

What a difference it would be if our system of morality were based on the Bible instead of the standards devised by cultural Christians.

Servile, and base, and mercenary, is the notion of Christian practice among the bulk of nominal Christians. They give no more than they dare not with-hold; they abstain from nothing but what they must not practise.

You can choose to look the other way but never again can you say that you never knew.

We are all guilty... [But the opportunity to make money] can draw a film across the eyes, so thick, that total blindness could do no more... A trade founded in iniquity must be abolished... let the consequences be what they will.

Having seen all this you can choose to look the other way, but you can never say again, 'I did not know.

What we believe determines how we live. Men who sincerely believed that what they were doing was right have perpetrated many of the most hideous crimes against humanity.

The instructive admonitions, "give an account of thy stewardship,"—"occupy till I come;" are forgotten. Thus the generous and wakeful spirit of Christian Benevolence, seeking and finding every where occasions for its exercise, is exploded, and a system of decent selfishness is avowedly established in its stead; a system scarcely more to be abjured for its impiety, than to be abhorred for its cold insensibility to the opportunities of diffusing happiness.

Politics is not a game. It is an earnest business.