Judges should avoid commenting on a candidate for public office.

Sin cannot be conceived in a natural state, but only in a civil state, where it is decreed by common consent what is good or bad.

I could not do what I do, and teach a class, and never miss a deadline, never be late for anything if I was a lush, OK? I would really love to read a piece that said, ‚He is not a lush.‘ That would be fabulous, it would be a first, I could show it to people and say, ‚Look!‘

To be is to do.

Judges ought to be more leaned than witty, more reverent than plausible, and more advised than confident. Above all things, integrity is their portion and proper virtue.

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

It is now quite lawful for a Catholic woman to avoid pregnancy by a resort to mathematics, though she is still forbidden to resort to physics or chemistry.

True virtue is life under the direction of reason.

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.

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

Non-cooperation with evil is as much a duty as is cooperation with good.

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

I can hardly eat meat because it has to look like something what it was not when it was alive.

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

In law a man is guilty when he violates the rights of others. In ethics he is guilty if he only thinks of doing so.

Next to doing the right thing, the most important thing is to let people know you are doing the right thing.

There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written.

So far as I am concerned, I could not be accused of having set eyes, or having wished to set eyes, upon Darius‘ wife: on the contrary, I have refused even to listen to those who spoke to me of her beauty.

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

Moral excellence comes about as a result of habit. We become just by doing just acts, temperate by doing temperate acts, brave by doing brave acts.

Science may have found a cure for most evils; but it has found no remedy for the worst of them all – the apathy of human beings.

I’ll never tell a lie. I’ll never make a misleading statement. I’ll never betray the confidence that any of you had in me. And I’ll never avoid a controversial issue.

The only objects of practical reason are therefore those of good and evil. For by the former is meant an object necessarily desired according to a principle of reason; by the latter one necessarily shunned, also according to a principle of reason.

Those who excel in virtue have the best right of all to rebel, but then they are of all men the least inclined to do so.

I always wanted to do things right and represent myself as somebody that took the art serious and someone that took the business serious also, so I had time to weigh the options and figure it out and do my best to create the situation that was ideal.

A reputation as a hard worker is a good reputation to have.

Ingratitude is the essence of vileness.

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.

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

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

The word ‚good‘ has many meanings. For example, if a man were to shoot his grandmother at a range of five hundred yards, I should call him a good shot, but not necessarily a good man.

If we cut up beasts simply because they cannot prevent us and because we are backing our own side in the struggle for existence, it is only logical to cut up imbeciles, criminals, enemies, or capitalists for the same reasons.

It’s that wonderful old-fashioned idea that others come first and you come second. This was the whole ethic by which I was brought up. Others matter more than you do, so ‚don’t fuss, dear; get on with it.‘

Success consecrates the most offensive crimes.

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.

Look at the Chandra Levy case. It’s become a Star Chamber. The major networks, the cable networks, they’re being prosecutors. They’re judges and jurors and executioners. Well, c’mon, that’s ridiculous. But they’re doing it.

Thieves respect property. They merely wish the property to become their property that they may more perfectly respect it.

The magistrates are the ministers for the laws, the judges their interpreters, the rest of us are servants of the law, that we all may be free.

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.

Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws.

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

Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich.

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

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.

There is no satisfaction in hanging a man who does not object to it.

It is right to give every man his due.

What people call impartiality may simply mean indifference, and what people call partiality may simply mean mental activity.

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.

States are not moral agents, people are, and can impose moral standards on powerful institutions.

Without feelings of respect, what is there to distinguish men from beasts?

Every man has the right to risk his own life in order to preserve it. Has it ever been said that a man who throws himself out the window to escape from a fire is guilty of suicide?

If a work of art is rich and vital and complete, those who have artistic instincts will see its beauty, and those to whom ethics appeal more strongly than aesthetics will see its moral lesson. It will fill the cowardly with terror, and the unclean will see in it their own shame.

Crime when it succeeds is called virtue.

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

The hungry judges soon the sentence sign, and wretches hang that jurymen may dine.

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

The superior man understands what is right; the inferior man understands what will sell.

We have got to change our ethics and our financial system and our whole way of understanding the world. It has to be a world in which people live rather than die; a sustainable world. It could be great.

I cannot pretend to be impartial about the colours. I rejoice with the brilliant ones, and am genuinely sorry for the poor browns.