Quotes about Ethics

When I am weaker than you, I ask you for freedom because that is according to your principles; when I am stronger than you, I take away your freedom because that is according to my principles.

Law always chooses sides on the basis of enforcement power. Morality and legal niceties have little to do with it when the real question is: Who has the clout?   —Bene

The historical system of mutual pillage and extortion stops here on Arrakis," his father said. "You cannot go on forever stealing what you need without regard to those who come after. The physical qualities of a planet are written into its economic and political record.

You took the universe as you found it and applied your principles where you could.

Thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a man's mind,'" Paul quoted. "Right out of the Butlerian Jihad and the Orange Catholic Bible," she said. "But what the O.C. Bible should've said is: 'Thou shalt not make a machine to counterfeit a human mind.' Have you studied the Mentat in your service?

My father once told me that respect for truth comes close to being the basis for all morality.

Who shall guard the guardians? Who shall see that the guardians commit no offenses?

Yes! See him there, this man who believes he cannot be bought. See him detained there by a million shares of himself sold in dribbles every second of his life! If you took him up now and shook him, he'd rattle inside. Emptied! Sold out! What difference how he dies now?

It requires good government. That does not depend upon laws or precedent, but upon the personal qualities of whoever governs.

Law—our highest ideal and our basest nature. Don't look too closely at the law.

a man must permit his deeds and his words to agree. When your actions describe a system of evil consequences, you should be judged by those con sequences and not by your explanations.

Whoever commits atrocity also commits those future atrocities thus bred.