Quotes about Ethics

The Why's of suffering keep us shrouded in a seemingly bottomless void of abstraction where God is reduced to a finite ethical agent, a limited psychological personality, whose purposes measure on the same scale as ours.

I mean Facebook is no longer a company, it's a country. 2 billion users. It can influence what we think, what we believe, how we vote, what we buy, even how we feel.

It is best to avoid the beginnings of evil.

A man's first care should be to avoid the reproaches of his own heart.

In doing what we ought we deserve no praise, because it is our duty.

Every act has both good and evil results. Every act in life yields pairs of opposites in its results. The best we can do is lean toward the light, toward the harmonious relationships that come from compassion with suffering, from understanding the other person.

In bounded communities, aggression is projected outward. For example, the ten commandments say, "Thou shalt not kill." Then the next chapter says, "Go into Canaan and kill everybody in it." That is a bounded field. The myths of participation and love pertain only to the in-group, and the out-group is totally other.

Our concern is not how to worship in the catacombs but how to remain human in the skyscrapers.

To be or not to be is not the question, the vital question is how to be and how not to be.

When I do good, I feel good, when I do bad, I feel bad, and that's my religion.

It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces; but let us judge not that we be not judged.

I am naturally anti-slavery. If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong. I can not remember when I did not so think, and feel.