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

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

Sometimes a nickname is used instead of the real name. But a nickname may offend either the one named or the parents who gave the name.

I do not know how to teach philosophy without becoming a disturber of established religion.

The moral virtues, then, are produced in us neither by nature nor against nature. Nature, indeed, prepares in us the ground for their reception, but their complete formation is the product of habit.

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.

When there is a lack of honor in government, the morals of the whole people are poisoned.

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

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

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

We need to have business leaders who live by deep, strong principles.

One who is injured ought not to return the injury, for on no account can it be right to do an injustice; and it is not right to return an injury, or to do evil to any man, however much we have suffered from him.

When I do good I feel good, when I do bad I feel bad, and that’s my religion.

Those who forget good and evil and seek only to know the facts are more likely to achieve good than those who view the world through the distorting medium of their own desires.

The human voice can never reach the distance that is covered by the still small voice of conscience.

It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right.

Judges should avoid commenting on a candidate for public office.

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

Of all virtues and dignities of the mind, goodness is the greatest, being the character of the Deity; and without it, man is a busy, mischievous, wretched thing.

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

Humanitarianism consists in never sacrificing a human being to a purpose.

In this business you have to develop a thick skin, but I’m always going to feel everything. It’s my nature.

Many religious confessions share common values. They teach that we should do unto others as we would have them do unto us.

Can anything be stupider than that a man has the right to kill me because he lives on the other side of a river and his ruler has a quarrel with mine, though I have not quarrelled with him?

There’s strong data that, within companies, the No. 1 reason for ethical violations is the pressure to meet expectations, sometimes unrealistic expectations.

The humanists‘ replacement for religion: work really hard and somehow you’ll either save yourself or you’ll be immortal. Of course, that’s a total joke, and our progress is nothing. There may be progress in technology but there’s no ethical progress whatsoever.

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.

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

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.

Every art and every inquiry, and similarly every action and choice, is thought to aim at some good; and for this reason the good has rightly been declared to be that at which all things aim.

In my view, the only thing worse than a rock star is a rock star with a conscience.

The fact is that a man who wants to act virtuously in every way necessarily comes to grief among so many who are not virtuous.

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

I am certain no one sets out to be cruel, but our treatment of the elderly ill seems to have no philosophy to it. As a society, we should establish whether we have a policy of life at any cost.

All the commandments: You shall not commit adultery, you shall not kill, you shall not steal, you shall not covet, and so on, are summed up in this single command: You must love your neighbor as yourself.

We’ve become, now, an oligarchy instead of a democracy. I think that’s been the worst damage to the basic moral and ethical standards to the American political system that I’ve ever seen in my life.

Slavery is founded in the selfishness of man’s nature – opposition to it is his love of justice. These principles are an eternal antagonism; and when brought into collision so fiercely, as slavery extension brings them, shocks and throes and convulsions must ceaselessly follow.

Reverence for life is the highest court of appeal.

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

Ethics is nothing else than reverence for life.

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.

When a man assumes a public trust he should consider himself a public property.

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

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

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

If there is no God, everything is permitted.

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

Morality is contraband in war.

When the President does it, that means that it’s not illegal.

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

If you must break the law, do it to seize power: in all other cases observe it.

When I was president, I announced and I still maintain that I can live with Roe v. Wade. I did everything I possibly could as president under that ruling, which I don’t think ought to be changed, to minimize the need for abortions. I think every abortion is a result of a horrible series of errors on the part of people involved.

Woe to him that claims obedience when it is not due; woe to him that refuses it when it is.

Morality which depends upon the helplessness of a man or woman has not much to recommend it. Morality is rooted in the purity of our hearts.

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.

Polygamy: An endeavour to get more out of life than there is in it.

Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison.

Success consecrates the most offensive crimes.

Without a moral framework, there is nothing left but immediate self-indulgence by some and the path of least resistance by others. Neither can sustain a free society.

May you live your life as if the maxim of your actions were to become universal law.

Immorality: the morality of those who are having a better time.