Quotes about Ethics

Servile, and base, and mercenary, is the notion of Christian practice among the bulk of nominal Christians. They give no more than they dare not with-hold; they abstain from nothing but what they must not practise.

You can choose to look the other way but never again can you say that you never knew.

We are all guilty... [But the opportunity to make money] can draw a film across the eyes, so thick, that total blindness could do no more... A trade founded in iniquity must be abolished... let the consequences be what they will.

Having seen all this you can choose to look the other way, but you can never say again, 'I did not know.

What we believe determines how we live. Men who sincerely believed that what they were doing was right have perpetrated many of the most hideous crimes against humanity.

The instructive admonitions, "give an account of thy stewardship,"—"occupy till I come;" are forgotten. Thus the generous and wakeful spirit of Christian Benevolence, seeking and finding every where occasions for its exercise, is exploded, and a system of decent selfishness is avowedly established in its stead; a system scarcely more to be abjured for its impiety, than to be abhorred for its cold insensibility to the opportunities of diffusing happiness.

Politics is not a game. It is an earnest business.

Never does a man portray his character more vividly than his proclaiming the character to another.

Responsibility is the price of greatness.

If you think about what you ought to do for other people, your character will take care of itself.

Right is more precious than peace.

No man can sit down and withhold his hands from the warfare against wrong and get peace from his acquiescence.