Ethics is the activity of man directed to secure the inner perfection of his own personality.

Laws control the lesser man… Right conduct controls the greater one.

Do FBI Agents and FBI directors have political beliefs? Sure they do. But they’re not supposed to act on them.

I am afraid we must make the world honest before we can honestly say to our children that honesty is the best policy.

Morality is of the highest importance – but for us, not for God.

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

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

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

Repeal the Missouri Compromise – repeal all compromises – repeal the Declaration of Independence – repeal all past history, you still cannot repeal human nature. It will be the abundance of man’s heart that slavery extension is wrong; and out of the abundance of his heart, his mouth will continue to speak.

People who truly understand what is meant by self-reliance know they must live their lives by ethics rather than rules.

Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction.

I do not believe in the God of theology who rewards good and punishes evil.

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

I try to build a full personality for each of our cartoon characters – to make them personalities.

Frivolity is inborn, conceit acquired by education.

The more people rationalize cheating, the more it becomes a culture of dishonesty. And that can become a vicious, downward cycle. Because suddenly, if everyone else is cheating, you feel a need to cheat, too.

States are not moral agents.

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 desire to annoy no one, to harm no one, can equally well be the sign of a just as of an anxious disposition.

The ‚morality of compromise‘ sounds contradictory. Compromise is usually a sign of weakness, or an admission of defeat. Strong men don’t compromise, it is said, and principles should never be compromised.

Charity creates a multitude of sins.

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

I think God gives every one of us our own will, and unfortunately, some people choose to do evil things with it.

Shame may restrain what law does not prohibit.

All virtue is summed up in dealing justly.

Please don’t make the mistake of thinking that ‚Oryx and Crake‘ is anti-science. Science is a way of knowing, and a tool. Like all ways of knowing and tools, it can be turned to bad uses. And it can be bought and sold, and it often is. But it is not in itself bad. Like electricity, it’s neutral.

It is curious that physical courage should be so common in the world and moral courage so rare.

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.

Morality is contraband in war.

States should have the right to enact laws… particularly to end the inhumane practice of ending a life that otherwise could live.

The highest reach of injustice is to be deemed just when you are not.

I’m skeptical of any mission that has advertisers at its centerpiece.

I am a just man.

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.

Let me give you a definition of ethics: It is good to maintain and further life it is bad to damage and destroy life.

You cannot make a sinner into a saint by killing him. He who does not live as a saint here will never live as a saint hereafter.

Injustice is relatively easy to bear; what stings is justice.

We’re all sinners. Everybody you meet all over the world is a sinner.

There never was a truly great man that was not at the same time truly virtuous.

Let’s pray that the human race never escapes from Earth to spread its iniquity elsewhere.

The shepherd drives the wolf from the sheep’s throat, for which the sheep thanks the shepherd as his liberator, while the wolf denounces him for the same act as the destroyer of liberty. Plainly, the sheep and the wolf are not agreed upon a definition of liberty.

The love of economy is the root of all virtue.

For a war to be just three conditions are necessary – public authority, just cause, right motive.

Those who have virtue always in their mouths, and neglect it in practice, are like a harp, which emits a sound pleasing to others, while itself is insensible of the music.

I just usually go with my own taste. If I like something, and it happens to be against the law, well, then I might have a problem.

It means, people who are in high and responsible positions, if they go against righteousness, righteousness itself will get transformed into a destroyer.

To assert in any case that a man must be absolutely cut off from society because he is absolutely evil amounts to saying that society is absolutely good, and no-one in his right mind will believe this today.

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.

High moral character is not a precondition for great moral accomplishments.

Injustice is censured because the censures are afraid of suffering, and not from any fear which they have of doing injustice.

Great bodies of people are never responsible for what they do.

Idealism is the noble toga that political gentlemen drape over their will to power.

Compassion is the basis of morality.

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

Richard Nixon was an evil man – evil in a way that only those who believe in the physical reality of the Devil can understand it. He was utterly without ethics or morals or any bedrock sense of decency.

It takes two to make a murder. There are born victims, born to have their throats cut, as the cut-throats are born to be hanged.

To educate a man in mind and not in morals is to educate a menace to society.

After the first blush of sin comes its indifference.

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.

Good men must not obey the laws too well.

Treat those who are good with goodness, and also treat those who are not good with goodness. Thus goodness is attained. Be honest to those who are honest, and be also honest to those who are not honest. Thus honesty is attained.