Quotes about Ethics

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.

Remember that rights are moral principles which define and protect a man's freedom of action, but impose no obligations on other men.

There can be no justification for choosing any part of that which one knows to be evil.

You want to do it? I might. If you offer me enough. Howard—anything you ask. Anything. I'd sell my soul... That's the sort of thing I want you to understand. To sell your soul is the easiest thing in the world. That's what everybody does every hour of his life. If I asked you to keep your soul—would you understand why that's much harder?

Let us destroy, but don't let us pretend that we are commiting an act of virtue.

I loathe your ideals because I know no worse injustice than the giving of the undeserved.

To abstain from condemning a torturer, is to become an accessory to the torture and murder of his victims.

Those who grant sympathy to guilt, grant none to innocence.