Quotes about Ethics

People have too often valued "proper" religious beliefs more than proper moral behavior, and even slaughtered others for not having the right religious beliefs. This is a common occurrence even in our time.

The Ten Commandments are there to warn all of us that, with very few exceptions, such as the immediate saving of innocent life, no cause is more important than truth-telling. The Ten Commandments are the greatest list of instructions ever devised for creating a good society. But such a society cannot be created or maintained if it is not based on truth.

Therefore, there is no issue here of a holy text depicting people being ordered by their God to kill infidels or innocents.

Regarding morality, intentions matter little; and often, not at all. But when it comes to relating to God (prayer, ritual acts, etc.), intentions matter a great deal.

Good societies can survive people doing immoral things. But a good society can not survive if it calls immoral things moral.

The poor who commit murder, rape and robbery are not only not starving, they have far more material things than the word 'poverty' suggests.

If doing the bad thing never brought benefits, no one would ever do

The most important thing to understand when it comes to our baser parts is not only how normal and natural it is to have them but that there is nothing wrong in having them. Bad is doing bad, not thinking bad (there are exceptions—see the next chapter), and it is certainly not merely having bad tendencies.

To be neutral in a situation of injustice is to have chosen sides already. It is to support the status quo.

The rubric of proportionality had to be observed—that the means were proportional to the objective.

I'll assure you this: I will have nothing to do with politics.

We must find our duties in what comes to us, not in what might have been.