Quotes about Ethics

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.

This means that, bad though it is and dangerous though its slipway may prove, there is a sense in which hypocrisy may be preferable to wickedness. Hypocrisy still cares enough about virtue to want to pretend to be virtuous, or at least it recognizes that the society around still prizes virtue enough to make it worth flattering.

Either we conform our desires to the truth or we conform the truth to our desires.

I do not approve of anything which tampers with natural ignorance.