Quotes about Ethics

In the past we have tried to make a distinction between animals which we acknowledge have some value and other which, having none, can be liquidated when we wish. This standard must be abandoned. Everything that lives has value simply as a living thing, as one of the manifestations of the mystery that is life.

Ethics, too, are nothing but reverence for life. This is what gives me the fundamental principle of morality, namely, that good consists in maintaining, promoting, and enhancing life, and that destroying, injuring, and limiting life are evil.

Compassion, in which all ethics must take root, can only attain its full breadth and depth if it embraces all living creatures and does not limit itself to mankind.

By ethical conduct toward all creatures, we enter into a spiritual relationship with the universe.

Dare to face the situation...Man has become a superman... But the superman with the superhuman power has not risen to the level of superhuman reason. To the degree which his power grows he becomes more and more a poor man... It must shake up our conscience that we become all the more inhuman the more we grow into superhuman.

In order to make the Kingdom of God a practical reality, it was necessary for Him to dissociate it from all the forces of this world, and to bring morality and religion into the closest connexion. "The law of love was the indissoluble bond by which Jesus for ever united morality with religion." "Moral instruction was the principal content and the very essence of all His discourses." His efforts "were directed to the establishment of a purely ethical organisation.

Ethik ist ins Grenzenlose erweiterte Verantwortung gegen alles, was lebt.

A man does not have to be an angel to be a saint.

The thinking (person) must oppose all cruel customs, no matter how deeply rooted in tradition and surrounded by a halo. When we have a choice, we must avoid bringing torment and injury into the life of another.

Hell isn't merely paved with good intentions, it is walled and roofed with them.

We are living now, not in the delicious intoxication induced by the early successes of science, but in a rather grisly morning-after, when it has become apparent that what triumphant science has done hitherto is to improve the means for achieving unimproved or actually deteriorated ends.

An avaricious man might be tempted to betray the interests of the state for the acquisition of wealth.