Quotes about Ethics

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.

Furthermore, the most popular modern answer to the question of what it means to be a good person is to be kind. Do not make other people suffer. If it doesn't hurt anyone, it's O.K. By this standard, God is not good it he lets us suffer. But by ancient standards, God might be good even though he lets us suffer, if he does it for the sake of the greater end of happiness, perfection of life and character and soul, that is, self.

Right Response to Reality—the Three R's—is the fundamental principle of morality, of sanctity, and of sanity.

F]or a thing to be evil, one single defect suffices, whereas for it to be good . . . it is not enough for it to be good in one point only, it must be good in every respect. . . .

of all the natural virtues these four are "cardinal," i.e., the hinges ("cardes") on which all other virtues turn, the foundations on which all the other virtues are built.