Cruelty is, perhaps, the worst kid of sin. Intellectual cruelty is certainly the worst kind of cruelty.
Gilbert K. ChestertonNo cause justifies the deaths of innocent people.
Albert CamusIt is not my nature, when I see a people borne down by the weight of their shackles – the oppression of tyranny – to make their life more bitter by heaping upon them greater burdens; but rather would I do all in my power to raise the yoke than to add anything that would tend to crush them.
Abraham LincolnBut the relationship of morality and power is a very subtle one. Because ultimately power without morality is no longer power.
James BaldwinMany religious confessions share common values. They teach that we should do unto others as we would have them do unto us.
Russell M. NelsonA dogmatic belief in objective value is necessary to the very idea of a rule which is not tyranny or an obedience which is not slavery.
C. S. LewisLet not the 12 million Negroes be ashamed of the fact that they are the grandchildren of slaves. There is dishonor in being slave-owners.
Mahatma GandhiA democracy which makes or even effectively prepares for modern, scientific war must necessarily cease to be democratic. No country can be really well prepared for modern war unless it is governed by a tyrant, at the head of a highly trained and perfectly obedient bureaucracy.
Aldous HuxleySome rise by sin, and some by virtue fall.
William ShakespeareThose who commit injustice bear the greatest burden.
Hosea BallouOf what use is a philosopher who doesn’t hurt anybody’s feelings?
DiogenesWithout feelings of respect, what is there to distinguish men from beasts?
ConfuciusWe all have done something unethical.
John C. MaxwellOur Declaration of Independence was held sacred by all and thought to include all; but now, to aid in making the bondage of the Negro universal and eternal, it is assailed, sneered at, construed, hawked at, and torn, till, if its framers could rise from their graves, they could not at all recognize it.
Abraham LincolnPlease 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.
Margaret AtwoodInjustice is relatively easy to bear; what stings is justice.
H. L. MenckenA man without ethics is a wild beast loosed upon this world.
Albert CamusDeliver me from writers who say the way they live doesn’t matter. I’m not sure a bad person can write a good book, If art doesn’t make us better, then what on earth is it for.
Alice WalkerThere’s strong data that, within companies, the No. 1 reason for ethical violations is the pressure to meet expectations, sometimes unrealistic expectations.
Stephen CoveyNext to doing the right thing, the most important thing is to let people know you are doing the right thing.
John D. RockefellerSociety does not consist of individuals but expresses the sum of interrelations, the relations within which these individuals stand.
Karl MarxCharacter is always known. Thefts never enrich; alms never impoverish; murder will speak out of stone walls.
Ralph Waldo EmersonFrom behind the Iron Curtain, there are signs that tyranny is in trouble and reminders that its structure is as brittle as its surface is hard.
Dwight D. EisenhowerThe truth is, hardly any of us have ethical energy enough for more than one really inflexible point of honor.
George Bernard ShawFear is the mother of morality.
Friedrich NietzscheHe who steals a little steals with the same wish as he who steals much, but with less power.
PlatoNo public man can be just a little crooked.
Herbert HooverThe 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?
Dale CarnegieMeans we use must be as pure as the ends we seek.
Martin Luther King, Jr.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.‘
Audrey HepburnThere 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.
Stephen HawkingIt’s so hard to know what to do when one wishes earnestly to do right.
George Bernard ShawIf 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.
Robert GreeneIf 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.
C. S. LewisJustice is itself the great standing policy of civil society; and any eminent departure from it, under any circumstances, lies under the suspicion of being no policy at all.
Edmund BurkeOne of the great attractions of patriotism – it fulfills our worst wishes. In the person of our nation we are able, vicariously, to bully and cheat. Bully and cheat, what’s more, with a feeling that we are profoundly virtuous.
Aldous HuxleyAnd whether you’re an honest man, or whether you’re a thief, depends on whose solicitor has given me my brief.
Benjamin FranklinMen never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction.
Blaise PascalNo trace of slavery ought to mix with the studies of the freeborn man. No study, pursued under compulsion, remains rooted in the memory.
PlatoI know of only one duty, and that is to love.
Albert CamusLaws made by common consent must not be trampled on by individuals.
George WashingtonThe first step in the evolution of ethics is a sense of solidarity with other human beings.
Albert SchweitzerA man in debt is so far a slave.
Ralph Waldo EmersonThose 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.
DiogenesMay be is very well, but Must is the master. It is my duty to show justice without recompense.
Lucius Annaeus SenecaYou can wipe out your opponents. But if you do it unjustly you become eligible for being wiped out yourself.
Ernest HemingwayRichard 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.
Hunter S. ThompsonIt is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right.
Henry David ThoreauWhen a man assumes a public trust he should consider himself a public property.
Thomas JeffersonThe tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.
Thomas JeffersonThe man who could go to Africa and rob her of her children, and then sell them into interminable bondage, with no other motive than that which is furnished by dollars and cents, is so much worse than the most depraved murderer that he can never receive pardon at my hand.
Abraham LincolnNote, besides, that it is no more immoral to directly rob citizens than to slip indirect taxes into the price of goods that they cannot do without.
Albert CamusThieves respect property. They merely wish the property to become their property that they may more perfectly respect it.
Gilbert K. ChestertonLet’s pray that the human race never escapes from Earth to spread its iniquity elsewhere.
C. S. LewisIt’s okay to eat fish because they don’t have any feelings.
Kurt CobainEven in the United States, the enslavement of African descendants continued until the presidency of Abraham Lincoln. That brutal form of slavery was abolished there hardly thirty years before it was abolished in Cuba.
Fidel CastroIf Tyranny and Oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy.
James MadisonI am fearful, or suspicious, of generalizations… They cannot guide me reliably in making decisions about particular individuals.
Ruth Bader GinsburgAn idea, to be suggestive, must come to the individual with the force of revelation.
William JamesWherever there is interest and power to do wrong, wrong will generally be done.
James Madison