Quotes about Ethics

Virtue is more clearly shown in the performance of fine ACTIONS than in the non-performance of base ones.

The best minds are not in government. If any were, business would steal them away. -Ronald Reagan In the absence of justice, what is sovereignty but organized robbery?

Business owners should not have to choose between violating their faith and violating the law.

Socrates: "The corruption of the best things are the worst things." Or, "The best, when corrupted, become the worst." As one of your English poets has said, "Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds.

That's what's so striking about the title of Kushner's book: When Bad Things Happen to Good People. How is that fair? Well, the answer to that is that there are no good people.

For any act to be morally right, three things are necessary: (1) right act, (2) right motive, and (3) right circumstances. If any one of these factors is not right, the act is wrong.

Psychology can make us feel good, but religion can make us be good.

It is much easier to fail to love your parents than to fail to love your children. That is why there is a commandment that commands love and respect to parents, but not to children. In an age of abortion, there ought to be an eleventh commandment against neglecting, harming, abusing, or even murdering your own children.

If human life becomes cheapened, it becomes cheapened at both ends. Parents are killed, by euthanasia, when they become a "burden" to their children; and children are killed, by abortion, when they become a "burden" to their parents. All societies in history would regard these two sins as two of the most heartless and inhuman possible sins. To kill your parents is to kill yourself, your own past; and to kill your children is to kill yourself, your own future.

Only when there is virtue in souls can there be peace and happiness in society.

St. Thomas is as practical and plain and reasonable in ethics as Aristotle, or Confucius, or your uncle.

There is no such thing as an involuntary sin.