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

Morality is the theory that every human act must be either right or wrong, and that 99 % of them are wrong.

Shame may restrain what law does not prohibit.

We object not to the narration of the deeds of our unregenerate condition, but to the mode in which it is too often done. Let sin have its monument, but let it be a heap of stones cast by the hands of execration – not a mausoleum erected by the hands of affection.

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.

Is it not enough to know the evil to shun it? If not, we should be sincere enough to admit that we love evil too well to give it up.

We moralize among ruins.

No man is justified in doing evil on the ground of expedience.

If what you have done is unjust, you have not succeeded.

All the interests of my reason, speculative as well as practical, combine in the three following questions: 1. What can I know? 2. What ought I to do? 3. What may I hope?

When you have to kill a man, it costs nothing to be polite.

Successful and fortunate crime is called virtue.

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.

Evil is the product of the ability of humans to make abstract that which is concrete.

What you do not want done to yourself, do not do to others.

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

Perhaps I can say that I am a bit astute, that I can adapt to circumstances, but it is also true that I am a bit naive. Yes, but the best summary, the one that comes more from the inside and I feel most true is this: I am a sinner whom the Lord has looked upon.

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

Sin, also for those who don’t have faith, exists when one goes against one’s conscience. To listen to and obey it means, in fact, to decide in face of what is perceived as good or evil. And on this decision pivots the goodness or malice of our action.

If Christ has died for me, ungodly as I am, without strength as I am, then I cannot live in sin any longer, but must arouse myself to love and serve Him who has redeemed me.

About morals, I know only that what is moral is what you feel good after and what is immoral is what you feel bad after.

It disturbs me no more to find men base, unjust, or selfish than to see apes mischievous, wolves savage, or the vulture ravenous.

Modesty forbids what the law does not.

The first step in the evolution of ethics is a sense of solidarity with other human beings.

Sin is geographical.

Cruelty, like every other vice, requires no motive outside of itself; it only requires opportunity.

There are no easy answers, but there are simple answers. We must have the courage to do what we know is morally right.

Fear is the mother of morality.

I feel a distaste for hunting, first because of a kind of Buddhist respect for the unity and sacredness of all life, and also because the pursuit of a hare or chamois strikes me as a kind of ‚escape of energy,‘ that is, the expenditure of our effort in an illusory end, one devoid of profit.

Honor is simply the morality of superior men.

Honor has not to be won; it must only not be lost.

Desire of having is the sin of covetousness.

That he delights in the misery of others no man will confess, and yet what other motive can make a father cruel?

I object to violence because when it appears to do good, the good is only temporary; the evil it does is permanent.

All philosophy lies in two words, sustain and abstain.

In some sort of crude sense, which no vulgarity, no humor, no overstatement can quite extinguish, the physicists have known sin; and this is a knowledge which they cannot lose.

Because of lack of moral principle, human life becomes worthless. Moral principle, truthfulness, is a key factor. If we lose that, then there is no future.

To be safe at the expense of the liberty of other people is a difficult equation.

Of all the varieties of virtues, liberalism is the most beloved.

You say it is the good cause that hallows even war? I say unto you: it is the good war that hallows any cause.

No matter what has happened to you in the past or what is going on in your life right now, it has no power to keep you from having an amazingly good future if you will walk by faith in God. God loves you! He wants you to live with victory over sin so you can possess His promises for your life today!

Means we use must be as pure as the ends we seek.

If a person is successful, we imagine they are probably also ethical, conscientious and deserving of their good fortune. This obscures the fact that many people who get ahead have done so by doing less than moral actions, which they cleverly disguise from view.

When you look at a corporation, just like when you look at a slave owner, you want to distinguish between the institution and the individual. So slavery, for example, or other forms of tyranny, are inherently monstrous. The individuals participating in them may be the nicest guys you can imagine.

Justice is the set and constant purpose which gives every man his due.

A strong argument for the religion of Christ is this – that offences against Charity are about the only ones which men on their death-beds can be made – not to understand – but to feel – as crime.

A large part of mankind is angry not with the sins, but with the sinners.

Doctors will have more lives to answer for in the next world than even we generals.

There are few things more dishonorable than misleading the young.

There is no kind of dishonesty into which otherwise good people more easily and frequently fall than that of defrauding the government.

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?

The time has come for all evangelists to practice full financial disclosure. The world is watching how we walk and how we talk. We must have the highest standards of morality, ethics and integrity if we are to continue to have influence.

Doing well is the result of doing good. That’s what capitalism is all about.

Nonviolence is a good policy when the conditions permit.

We might come closer to balancing the Budget if all of us lived closer to the Commandments and the Golden Rule.

I do not recognize the right of the public to break in the front door of a man’s private life in order to satisfy the gaze of the curious… I do not think it right to dissect living men even for the advancement of science. So far as I am concerned, I prefer a post mortem examination to vivisection without anaesthetics.

The difference between a moral man and a man of honor is that the latter regrets a discreditable act, even when it has worked and he has not been caught.

God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. Yet his shadow still looms. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives; who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves?

I would be loath to speak ill of any person who I do not know deserves it, but I am afraid he is an attorney.

A man without ethics is a wild beast loosed upon this world.

Justice… is a kind of compact not to harm or be harmed.