Quotes about Ethics

One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws.

I may be on the side of the Angels ,but don't think for one second that I am one of them.

To feel envy is human, to savour schadenfreude is devilish.

universal compassion is the only guarantee of morality.

It can truly be said: Men are the devils of the earth, and the animals are the tormented souls.

Behind the cross stands the devil.

Virtue is as little taught as is genius; indeed, the concept is just as unfruitful for it as it is for art, and in the case of both can be used only as an instrument. We should therefore be just as foolish to expect that our moral systems and ethics would create virtuous, noble, and holy men, as that our aesthetics would produce poets, painters, and musicians.

The power of religious dogma, when inculcated early, is such as to stifle conscience, compassion, and finally every feeling of humanity.

Conscience accompanies every act with the comment: You should act differently, although its true sense is: You could be other than you are.

The actual facts of morality are too much on my side for me to fear that my theory can ever be replaced or upset by any other.

It is a clear gain to sacrifice pleasure in order to avoid pain.

In its death throes, we see religion clinging to morality, whose mother it would like to pretend to be. In vain! — genuine morality is dependent on no religion, although religion sanctions and thereby sustains it.