Quotes about Ethics

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.

For boundless compassion for all living beings is the firmest and most certain guarantee of moral good conduct and requires no casuistry. Whoever is filled with it will certainly injure no one, infringe on no one, do no one harm, rather, forbear everyone, forgive everyone, help everyone as much as he can, and all his actions will carry the imprint of justice and loving kindness.

The pleasure in this world, it has been said, outweighs the pain; or, at any rate, there is an even balance between the two. If the reader wishes to see shortly whether this statement is true, let him compare the respective feelings of two animals, one of which is engaged in eating the other.

It is no longer sufficient to love others as himself and to do as much for them as he would do for himself; rather, a repugnance arises in him… towards the will-to-live, towards the core and essence of that world recognized as filled with misery.

these people would indeed only be concerned for themselves, for their egoism, just like the bandit, from whom they are distinguished only by the absurdity of their means.

What we do to the animals is perhaps their hell

I worship individuals for their highest possibilities as individuals and I loathe humanity for its failure to live up to these possibilities.

Run for your life from any man who tells you that money is evil. That sentence is the leper's bell of an approaching looter.

In this world, either you're virtuous or you enjoy yourself. Not both, lady, not both.

The man who damns money has obtained it dishonorably; the man who respects it has earned it.

A rational man never distorts or corrupts his own standards and judgment in order to appeal to the irrationality, stupidity, or dishonesty of others.

If the rest of them can survive only by destroying us, then why should we wish them to survive? . . . Nothing can make it moral to destroy the best. One can't be punished for being good. One can't be penalized for ability.