Quotes about Ethics

When we tell little white lies, we become progressively color-blind. It is better to remain silent than to mislead.

Treat those who are good with goodness, and also treat those who are not good with goodness. Thus goodness is attained. Be honest to those who are honest, and be also honest to those who are not honest. Thus honesty is attained.

If I'm walking down the riverbank, and a man is drowning, even if I don't know how to swim very well, I feel this urge that the right thing to do is to try to save that person. Evolution would tell me exactly the opposite: preserve your DNA. Who cares about the guy who's drowning?

Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.

Perfection of moral virtue does not wholly take away the passions, but regulates them.

Good masters teach good doctrine, but that taught by evil masters is wholly evil.

The true greatness of a person, in my view, is evident in the way he or she treats those with whom courtesy and kindness are not required.

I care not much for a man's religion whose dog and cat are not the better for it.

The ideas I stand for are not mine. I borrowed them from Socrates. I swiped them from Chesterfield. I stole them from Jesus. And I put them in a book. If you don't like their rules, whose would you use?

If we weren't born with anti-social passions - narcissism, envy, lust, meanness, greed, hunger for power, just to name the more obvious - why the need for so many laws, whether religious or secular, that govern behavior?

The foolish and wicked practice of profane cursing and swearing is a vice so mean and low that every person of sense and character detests and despises it.

It would be wrong to say I enjoy having rows, because that would be un-Christian. If people attack me, then I respond, or if they do very wicked things. Then they must be brought to book.