Quotes about Ethics

if there is no God, everything is lawful

we humans have a fatal tendency to try to adjust the truth to fit our desires rather than adjusting our desires to fit the truth. But

On the other hand, if there is no God, then your life ultimately means nothing. Since there is no enduring purpose to life, there's no right or wrong way to live it. And it doesn't matter how you live or what you believe—your destiny is dust.

Neither can we deny that free will (the power of free choice) is a good thing.

Regardless of what the real truth is concerning religion and morality, our lives are greatly affected by it today and perhaps even in eternity.

Where is there dignity unless there is honesty?

No one has the right to do wrong, even if wrong has been done to them.

It is not for me to pass judgement on those prisoners who put their own people above everyone else. Who can throw a stone at a man who favors his friends under circumstances when, sooner or later, it is a question of life or death? No man should judge unless he asks himself in absolute honesty whether in a similar situation he might not have done the same.

We have come to know Man as he really is. After all, man is that being who invented the gas chambers of Auschwitz; however, he is also that being who entered those gas chambers upright.

Only slowly could these men be guided back to the commonplace truth that no one has the right to do wrong, not even if wrong has been done to them.

What does Spinoza say in his Ethics? —"Affectus, qui passio est, desinit esse passio simulatque eius claram et distinctam formamus ideam." Emotion, which is suffering, ceases to be suffering as soon as we form a clear and precise picture of it.

A human being should never become a means to an end.