A few years ago, the city council of Monza, Italy, barred pet owners from keeping goldfish in curved bowls… saying that it is cruel to keep a fish in a bowl with curved sides because, gazing out, the fish would have a distorted view of reality. But how do we know we have the true, undistorted picture of reality?

We are justified in enforcing good morals, for they belong to all mankind; but we are not justified in enforcing good manners, for good manners always mean our own manners.

I think that we all know what evil is. We have a sense of what’s evil, and certainly killing innocent people is evil. We’re less sure about what is good. There’s sort of good, good enough, could be better – but absolute good is a little harder to define.

Ordinary morality is innate in my view.

If I’d written all the truth I knew for the past ten years, about 600 people – including me – would be rotting in prison cells from Rio to Seattle today. Absolute truth is a very rare and dangerous commodity in the context of professional journalism.

Every man must decide whether he will walk in the light of creative altruism or in the darkness of destructive selfishness.

Aim above morality. Be not simply good, be good for something.

Of two evils, choose neither.

The rulers of the state are the only persons who ought to have the privilege of lying, either at home or abroad; they may be allowed to lie for the good of the state.

We all have done something unethical.

It’s not that every single thing that happens on Facebook is gonna be good. This is humanity. People use tools for good and bad, but I think that we have a clear responsibility to make sure that the good is amplified and to do everything we can to mitigate the bad.

Honesty is for the most part less profitable than dishonesty.

In matters of conscience, the law of the majority has no place.

A man is ethical only when life, as such, is sacred to him, that of plants and animals as that of his fellow men, and when he devotes himself helpfully to all life that is in need of help.

In the game of cricket, a hero is a person who respects the game and does not corrupt the game. The one who doesn’t or corrupts the game, they are the villain. They should be punished, and they have been punished in the past.

Conscientious people are apt to see their duty in that which is the most painful course.

No obligation to do the impossible is binding.

I do not pilfer victory.

I have gained this from philosophy: that I do without being commanded what others do only from fear of the law.

Wherever there is interest and power to do wrong, wrong will generally be done.

Younger scientists are extremely sensitive to the moral implications of all they do.

Italy, and the spring and first love all together should suffice to make the gloomiest person happy.

It is more from carelessness about truth than from intentionally lying that there is so much falsehood in the world.

Honesty is the best policy – when there is money in it.

The year 2100 will see eugenics universally established. In past ages, the law governing the survival of the fittest roughly weeded out the less desirable strains. Then man’s new sense of pity began to interfere with the ruthless workings of nature. As a result, we continue to keep alive and to breed the unfit.

He who commits injustice is ever made more wretched than he who suffers it.

There is a real danger that computers will develop intelligence and take over. We urgently need to develop direct connections to the brain so that computers can add to human intelligence rather than be in opposition.

Rights that do not flow from duty well performed are not worth having.

A moral monopoly is the antithesis of a marketplace of ideas.

How could man rejoice in victory and delight in the slaughter of men?

To say that you can kill in the name of God is blasphemy.

The computer brings out the worst in some people.

We tell lies, yet it is easy to show that lying is immoral.

It’s so hard to know what to do when one wishes earnestly to do right.

There is still much debate about whether torture has been effective in eliciting information – the assumption being, apparently, that if it is effective, then it may be justified.

I’m definitely looking forward to the day when I stop working – if I ever stop working. I like the idea of keeling over in my tomato vines in Sardinia or northern Italy.

Honor and shame from no condition rise. Act well your part: there all the honor lies.

The ideas I stand for are not mine. I borrowed them from Socrates. I swiped them from Chesterfield. I stole them from Jesus. And I put them in a book. If you don’t like their rules, whose would you use?

True virtue is life under the direction of reason.

An individual’s refusal to carry out the criminal acts of his government sets the stage, in the most effective way possible, for the attempt to demonstrate the criminal nature of these acts.

Truth is certainly a branch of morality and a very important one to society.

A President’s hardest task is not to do what is right, but to know what is right.

There is no principle worth the name if it is not wholly good.

Cruelty is, perhaps, the worst kid of sin. Intellectual cruelty is certainly the worst kind of cruelty.

What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans, and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty or democracy?

The one thing that doesn’t abide by majority rule is a person’s conscience.

I believe that every right implies a responsibility; every opportunity, an obligation; every possession, a duty.

Never do anything against conscience even if the state demands it.

The only obligation which I have a right to assume is to do at any time what I think right.

So long as governments set the example of killing their enemies, private individuals will occasionally kill theirs.

In Italy they take cheap cloth and make it look expensive, but I take expensive cloth and make it look cheap. They just don’t understand.

Saints should always be judged guilty until they are proved innocent.

I can do no other than be reverent before everything that is called life. I can do no other than to have compassion for all that is called life. That is the beginning and the foundation of all ethics.

Abortion isn’t a lesser evil, it’s a crime. Taking one life to save another, that’s what the Mafia does. It’s a crime. It’s an absolute evil.

A business that makes nothing but money is a poor business.

Who shall decide when doctors disagree, And soundest casuists doubt, like you and me?

Violence is both unavoidable and unjustifiable.

What is human warfare but just this; an effort to make the laws of God and nature take sides with one party.

The role of the intellectual cannot be to excuse the violence of one side and condemn that of the other.

The man who has won millions at the cost of his conscience is a failure.

If you’re not going to be rewarded for your virtues, and instead you’re going to be punished for them, then what’s your motivation to continue?