Quotes about Ethics

Virtue, after all, isn't just about morals in the sense of "knowing the standards to live up to" or "knowing which rules you're supposed to keep." Virtue, as we have already seen, is about the whole of life, not just the specifically "moral" choices.

Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics, and many others speak of dying for the law, for one's country, one's friends, one's family, even for the emperor.

We've had enough of pragmatists and self-seeking risk-takers. We need people of character.

The only way we can get to the heart of understanding the moral challenge Jesus offered, and offers still today, is by thinking in terms not of rules or of the calculation of effects or of romantic or existentialist "authenticity," but of virtue. A virtue that has been transformed by the kingdom and the cross.

These four strengths of character—courage, restraint, cool judgment, and determination to do the right thing for others—are, in fact, precisely the four qualities which the greatest ancient philosopher who wrote about such matters identified as

This should not put us off. A world full of people who read and pray the Sermon on the Mount, or even a world with only a few such people in it, will always be a better place than a world without such people.

The generous one-dimensional desire to be a hero, to 'do the right thing', needs to be rounded out with the equally generous willingness to restrain apparent heroism when it might itself bring disaster.

There is no moral authority like that of sacrifice.

The malediction is upon him even if the law does not exact it.

Have you any right

Ironically, moral relativists often even pride themselves on being morally superior to others.

Morality is always derivative. It stems from one's worldview.