Quotes and Sayings about Ethics
"Action indeed is the sole medium of expression for ethics."
- Jane Addams
(Related: Action, Ethics, Expression)
"The first and only principle of sexual ethics: the accuser is always in the wrong."
- Theodor Adorno
(Related: First, Wrong)
"I've handled colour as a man should behave. You may conclude that I consider ethics and aesthetics as one."
- Josef Albers
(Related: Aesthetics, Ethics, Man, May)
"I have been committed to carrying out my duties... in accordance with both the letter and spirit of all applicable rules of ethics and canons of conduct."
- Samuel Alito
(Related: Ethics, Rules, Spirit)
"History shows that where ethics and economics come in conflict, victory is always with economics. Vested interests have never been known to have willingly divested themselves unless there was sufficient force to compel them."
- B. R. Ambedkar
(Related: History, Victory, Conflict, Economics, Ethics, Force)
"A people and their religion must be judged by social standards based on social ethics. No other standard would have any meaning if religion is held to be necessary good for the well-being of the people."
- B. R. Ambedkar
(Related: Religion, People, Ethics, Meaning)
"The novel is a penetrating study of morals and ethics."
- Bille August
(Related: Ethics, Morals, Study)
"According to the new ethics, virtue is not restrictive but expansive, a sentiment and even an intoxication."
- Irving Babbitt
(Related: Virtue, Ethics, Sentiment)
"We have also set up the national institute for ethics. This institute and also the implementation of the national integrity plan, that will certainly do the follow up that is necessary for this."
- Abdullah Ahmad Badawi
(Related: Ethics, Integrity, Will)
"My hope is that people will be repulsed by the character's complete lack of ethics and obsession with consumerism - that's what I was saying about the difference between the character's message and the film's message."
- Christian Bale
(Related: People, Character, Hope, Difference, Ethics, Film, Obsession, Saying, Will)
"Our identities have no bodies, so, unlike you, we cannot obtain order by physical coercion. We believe that from ethics, enlightened self-interest, and the commonweal, our governance will emerge."
- John Perry Barlow
(Related: Ethics, Order, Self, Will)
"You do not know our culture, our ethics, or the unwritten codes that already provide our society more order than could be obtained by any of your impositions."
- John Perry Barlow
(Related: Society, Culture, Ethics, Order)
"In literature as in ethics, there is danger, as well as glory, in being subtle. Aristocracy isolates us."
- Charles Baudelaire
(Related: Aristocracy, Being, Danger, Ethics, Glory, Literature)
"I filed the ethics complaint against Tom DeLay not because I'm a Democrat and he's a Republican or even because he drew me out of my congressional seat but because he engaged in corruption to further his plans to disenfranchise voters in Texas."
- Chris Bell
(Related: Complaint, Corruption, Delay, Ethics, Republican)
"Ethics in government has always been important to me."
- Chris Bell
(Related: Government, Ethics)
"The jury had down right contempt for punk rock grass roots ethics."
- Jello Biafra
(Related: Contempt, Ethics, Jury, Punk, Right)
"There is a concept that is the corrupter and destroyer of all others. I speak not of Evil, whose limited empire is that of ethics; I speak of the infinite."
- Jorge Luis Borges
(Related: Ethics, Evil, Infinite)
"One concept corrupts and confuses the others. I am not speaking of the Evil whose limited sphere is ethics; I am speaking of the infinite."
- Jorge Luis Borges
(Related: Ethics, Evil, Infinite)
"Grub first, then ethics."
- Bertolt Brecht
(Related: Ethics, First)
"Divorced from ethics, leadership is reduced to management and politics to mere technique."
- James MacGregor Burns
(Related: Leadership, Politics, Management, Ethics)
"A man without ethics is a wild beast loosed upon this world."
- Albert Camus
(Related: Ethics, Man, World)
"Convinced as I am and as I am from my government that the world needs a new moral architecture over all I believe that this should be the first topic to debate in our world of today, ethics, moral."
- Hugo Chavez
(Related: Architecture, Government, Debate, Ethics, First, Needs, Today, World)
"In my book I specifically discussed the structural nature of injustice and offered Nine Touchstones of Goddess ethics as an alternative to the Ten Commandments of Biblical religion."
- Carol P. Christ
(Related: Nature, Religion, Ethics, Injustice)
"For this equilibrium now in sight, let us trust that mankind, as it has occurred in the greatest periods of its past, will find for itself a new code of ethics, common to all, made of tolerance, of courage, and of faith in the Spirit of men."
- Albert Claude
(Related: Faith, Men, Trust, Courage, Ethics, Mankind, Now, Past, Sight, Spirit, Tolerance, Will)
"The key factor is whether the agent is a member of the Association of Authors' Representatives, which screens its members and requires them to uphold a Canon of Ethics."
- Richard Curtis
(Related: Ethics, Key)
"As we enter into the 110th Congress, it is imperative that we address ethics reforms needed to make this institution run correctly."
- Jo Ann Davis
(Related: Congress, Ethics)
"Thus Christian humanism is as indispensable to the Christian way of life as Christian ethics and a Christian sociology."
- Christopher Dawson
(Related: Life, Christian, Ethics, Humanism)
"In the industry, you do need some ethics - if one film does well, then thousands get work and money comes back to the industry. I guess the bottomline is, if there are two versions, then the better one will click."
- Ajay Devgan
(Related: Money, Work, Ethics, Film, Will)
"Some of you read with me 40 years ago a portion of Aristotle's Ethics, a selection of passages that describe his idea of happiness. You may not remember too well."
- Charles Van Doren
(Related: Happiness, Idea, Ethics, May, Years)
"Live one day at a time emphasizing ethics rather than rules."
- Wayne Dyer
(Related: Time, Day, Ethics, Rules)
"Non-violence leads to the highest ethics, which is the goal of all evolution. Until we stop harming all other living beings, we are still savages."
- Thomas A. Edison
(Related: Goal, Ethics, Evolution, Living)
"I do not believe in immortality of the individual, and I consider ethics to be an exclusively human concern with no superhuman authority behind it."
- Albert Einstein
(Related: Authority, Concern, Ethics, Immortality)
"In the New Testament, religion is grace and ethics is gratitude."
- Thomas Erskine
(Related: Religion, Gratitude, Ethics, Grace, New testament)
"What's troubling is that the Republicans to defend Mr. DeLay are weakening the ethics process."
- Barney Frank
(Related: Delay, Ethics, Republicans)
"If people knew of ethics violations, they should have sent them to the Ethics Committee. If you think there was serious ethics violation that ought to be looked at, you don't hold it back for retaliatory purposes."
- Barney Frank
(Related: People, Committee, Ethics)
"Some men don't gel when it comes to work - you have different work ethics, different opinions, different points of views, different methods of filmmaking - and we didn't gel."
- Antoine Fuqua
(Related: Men, Work, Ethics, Opinions)
"Broad tolerance in the matter of beliefs is necessarily a part of the new ethics."
- Lafcadio Hearn
(Related: Beliefs, Ethics, Tolerance)
"If you look to lead, invest at least 40% of your time managing yourself - your ethics, character, principles, purpose, motivation, and conduct. Invest at least 30% managing those with authority over you, and 15% managing your peers."
- Dee Hock
(Related: Time, Motivation, Character, Purpose, Authority, Ethics, Principles)
"For the year after I left government service, I worked as a consultant to the Republican National Committee because the lawyers advised that was the proper way for me to comply with ethics regulations and continue to advise the President."
- Karen Hughes
(Related: Government, Committee, Ethics, Lawyers, President, Republican, Service)
"I am closer to a European viewpoint of the world than an American one. My ethics and ideals are based on European concepts."
- Bianca Jagger
(Related: American, Ethics, Ideals, World)
"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."
- Immanuel Kant
(Related: Ethics, Rights, Law, Man)
"The technological way of thinking has infected even ethics, which is supposed to be thinking about the good."
- Leon Kass
(Related: Ethics, Thinking)
"My personal conviction is that science is concerned wholly with truth, not with ethics."
- Arthur Keith
(Related: Science, Truth, Conviction, Ethics)
"If there are going to be people out there making war on other people, don't you think it's a good idea for some of those people to at least follow a code of ethics? Not 'honor' but something you can pin down and be sure of, something with the same rules for everybody."
- Mercedes Lackey
(Related: War, People, Idea, Ethics, Rules)
"The act of willing this or that, of choosing among various courses of conduct, is central in the realm of ethics."
- Corliss Lamont
(Related: Act, Ethics)
"Ethics and equity and the principles of justice do not change with the calendar."
- David Herbert Lawrence
(Related: Change, Ethics, Justice, Principles)
"Ethically, I think pretty much every code of ethics for doctors suggests that they should not be in an interrogation room, particularly if there's anything coercive or abusive going on."
- Jane Mayer
(Related: Doctors, Ethics, Pretty)
"In my time, we served with noble and ethical leaders: Gerry Ford, Bob Michael, John Rhodes, men of impeccable honesty. We didn't have anybody locked up for a violation of ethics."
- Pete McCloskey
(Related: Men, Time, Honesty, Ethics)
"We need a tougher enforcement program and, most importantly, we need to fix the badly broken ethics system."
- Marty Meehan
(Related: Ethics)
"Moralities, ethics, laws, customs, beliefs, doctrines - these are of trifling import. All that matters is that the miraculous become the norm."
- Henry Miller
(Related: Beliefs, Ethics, Laws)
"Given the way some fought for the status quo when I authored the new Ethics Code and created the city's first Ethics Commission, we are going to need your strong support to get an even tougher Ethics Code passed this year."
- Laura Miller
(Related: Ethics, First, Support)
"Now it's time to focus on basics for people in our neighborhoods... and real ethics reform at City Hall."
- Laura Miller
(Related: Time, People, Ethics, Focus, Now, Reform)
"In many ways, our campaign this year will be the same as last time: We're still going to focus on fixing up basics and cleaning up ethics at City Hall."
- Laura Miller
(Related: Ethics, Focus, Will)
"The involuntary character of psychiatric treatment is at odds with the spirit and ethics of medicine itself."
- Kate Millett
(Related: Character, Ethics, Medicine, Spirit, Treatment)
"That so unlikely an outcome should accrue to a man possessed of such limited talent and so many flaws, and one lacking in a sense of ethics and decency was one of the bitter ironies of history."
- William Thomas Green Morton
(Related: History, Talent, Decency, Ethics, Flaws, Man, Sense)
"Our very lives depend on the ethics of strangers, and most of us are always strangers to other people."
- Bill Moyers
(Related: People, Ethics, Strangers)
"The ethics of editorial judgement, however, began to go though a sea change during the late 1970s and '80s when the Carter and Reagan Administrations de-regulated the television industry."
- Roger Mudd
(Related: Change, Ethics, Sea, Television)
"Given what the media have put the country through this past decade, it must come as a surprise to most Americans that the press has a code of ethics."
- Roger Mudd
(Related: Americans, Country, Ethics, Media, Past, Press)
"My personal philosophy of life is one of ethics."
- Alva Myrdal
(Related: Life, Ethics, Philosophy)
"I have my ethics and morals. I have my anchor point of what is right and wrong in real life, but I'm not afraid to entertain any and every aspect of personality in relationship to creating a character."
- Corin Nemec
(Related: Life, Character, Ethics, Morals, Personality, Right, Wrong)
"There's been a sea change in our focus on corporate ethics. We've made more progress in the last three years than the previous 30."
- Steve Odland
(Related: Change, Progress, Corporate, Ethics, Focus, Sea, Years)
"I guess the painkillers wipe out your memory along with your ethics."
- Keith Olbermann
(Related: Ethics, Memory)
"I came to office promising major ethics reform to end the culture of self-dealing. And today, that ethics reform is a law. While I was at it, I got rid of a few things in the governor's office that I didn't believe our citizens should have to pay for. That luxury jet was over-the-top. I put it on eBay."
- Sarah Palin
(Related: Culture, End, Ethics, Law, Luxury, Office, Reform, Self, Today)
"Medicine rests upon four pillars - philosophy, astronomy, alchemy, and ethics."
- Paracelsus
(Related: Alchemy, Astronomy, Ethics, Medicine, Philosophy)
"If you deny that any principles of conduct at all are common to and admitted by all men who try to behave reasonably - well, I don't see how you can have any ethics or any ethical background for law."
- Frederick Pollock
(Related: Men, Ethics, Law, Principles)
"Nothing is less important than which fork you use. Etiquette is the science of living. It embraces everything. It is ethics. It is honor."
- Emily Post
(Related: Science, Ethics, Etiquette, Honor, Living, Nothing)
"Islam, the third in historical sequence of the ethical monotheistic religions of the Near East, was very successful in establishing its monotheism, but had only very moderate success in spreading its version of Jewish and Christian ethics to the Arabs."
- Carroll Quigley
(Related: Success, Successful, Christian, Islam, Ethics)
"Every aspect of Western culture needs a new code of ethics - a rational ethics - as a precondition of rebirth."
- Ayn Rand
(Related: Culture, Ethics, Needs, Rebirth)
"So the next thing I assume I'll be hearing from Republicans, they want to change rules some way, as they do on the House when you get a problem with ethics, they just change the rules."
- Harry Reid
(Related: Change, Ethics, Hearing, Republicans, Rules, Want)
"For a man who purports to have learned of media ethics only this month, Mr. Williams has spent an undue amount of time appearing as a media ethicist on both CNN and the cable news networks of NBC."
- Frank Rich
(Related: Time, Ethics, Man, Media, News)
"For my own part, I abandon the ethics of duty to the Hegelian critique with no regrets; it would appear to me, indeed, to have been correctly characterized by Hegel as an abstract thought, as a thought of understanding."
- Paul Ricoeur
(Related: Thought, Duty, Ethics, Understanding)
"According to our Christian ethics, we're supposed to love God, love each other and help take care of the poor. It is immoral to charge somebody making $5,000 an income tax."
- Bob Riley
(Related: Love, God, Christian, Care, Ethics, Tax, Help, Income, Poor)
"Ethics is in origin the art of recommending to others the sacrifices required for cooperation with oneself."
- Bertrand Russell
(Related: Art, Cooperation, Ethics)
"I had taken a course in Ethics. I read a thick textbook, heard the class discussions and came out of it saying I hadn't learned a thing I didn't know before about morals and what is right or wrong in human conduct."
- Carl Sandburg
(Related: Class, Ethics, Morals, Right, Saying, Wrong)
"I was raised with those principals and values and ethics that came out of the men and women that served. But this generation doesn't quite know; they haven't been tested."
- Jack Scalia
(Related: Men, Women, Values, Ethics)
"Now the relation which, in the sphere of nature, being and semblance or sensation bear to one another in this antithesis, is the same as that which in ethics exists between good and pleasure or feeling."
- Friedrich Schleiermacher
(Related: Nature, Being, Ethics, Feeling, Now, Pleasure)
"Ethics is nothing else than reverence for life."
- Albert Schweitzer
(Related: Life, Ethics, Nothing)
"Ethics is the activity of man directed to secure the inner perfection of his own personality."
- Albert Schweitzer
(Related: Ethics, Man, Perfection, Personality)
"Compassion, in which all ethics must take root, can only attain its full breadth and depth if it embraces all living creatures and does not limit itself to mankind."
- Albert Schweitzer
(Related: Compassion, Ethics, Living, Mankind)
"Let me give you a definition of ethics: It is good to maintain and further life it is bad to damage and destroy life."
- Albert Schweitzer
(Related: Life)
"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."
- Albert Schweitzer
(Related: Life, Beginning, Compassion, Ethics)
"The first step in the evolution of ethics is a sense of solidarity with other human beings."
- Albert Schweitzer
(Related: Ethics, Evolution, First, Sense, Solidarity)
"The Architect is just one of a series of works which examine the confrontation of innocence and experience, illustrating the complex ethics of power that exist between reader and writer, critic and artist, the human and the divine."
- John Scott
(Related: Power, Experience, Artist, Ethics, Innocence, Writer)
"Nothing gets a bigger laugh than when you refer to things like ethics or human rights."
- Ron Silver
(Related: Ethics, Rights, Human rights, Nothing)
"We see things like reciprocity which are fairly central to our view of ethics. But if you're talking about a set of worked-out rules on what we are supposed to do then, yes, it is a human product."
- Peter Singer
(Related: Ethics, Reciprocity, Rules, Talking)
"I would like us to think about it more explicitly, and not take our intuitions as the given of ethics, but rather to reflect on it, and be more open about the fact that something is an ethical issues and thin what we ought to do about it."
- Peter Singer
(Related: Ethics, Fact, Open)
"More often there's a compromise between ethics and expediency."
- Peter Singer
(Related: Compromise, Ethics, Expediency)
"At the descriptive level, certainly, you would expect different cultures to develop different sorts of ethics and obviously they have; that doesn't mean that you can't think of overarching ethical principles you would want people to follow in all kinds of places."
- Peter Singer
(Related: People, Ethics, Principles, Want)
"I don't think there's anything in the compromise that means that there's a clash of ethics."
- Peter Singer
(Related: Compromise, Ethics)
"I think ethics is always there; it's not always a very thoughtful or reflective ethics."
- Peter Singer
(Related: Ethics, Thoughtful)
"This House cannot function without an open, accountable, and independent ethics process; and the molestation of that process by the majority is an abuse of power that cannot stand."
- Louise Slaughter
(Related: Power, Abuse, Ethics, Majority, Open)
"Things change so fast, you can't use 1971 ethics on someone born in 1971."
- Grace Slick
(Related: Change, Ethics)
"The modern period adds social ethics to religions agenda, for we now realize that social structures are not like laws of nature. They are human creations, so we are responsible for them."
- Huston Smith
(Related: Nature, Ethics, Laws, Now)
"I think the ethics and morals of genetic engineering are very complicated. It intrigues me."
- Roger Spottiswoode
(Related: Engineering, Ethics, Morals)
"Whether gods exist or not, there is no way to get absolute certainty about ethics. Without absolute certainty, what do we do? We do the best we can."
- Richard Stallman
(Related: Gods, Certainty, Ethics)
"Ethics is knowing the difference between what you have a right to do and what is right to do."
- Potter Stewart
(Related: Difference, Ethics, Right)
"Excellent, there's nothing quite like a blunt object to reinforce proper administration ethics."
- Simon Travaglia
(Related: Ethics, Nothing)
"Even at school I studied ethics instead of religion."
- Ville Valo
(Related: Religion, Ethics, School)
"Football, that's just athletics. But in the business world - doing everything - people are competing. So you need good work ethics, and I think it helped me to develop good work ethics, being in a small town."
- Herschel Walker
(Related: Business, Work, People, Being, Ethics, Football, World)
"In civilized life, law floats in a sea of ethics."
- Earl Warren
(Related: Life, Ethics, Law, Sea)
"Having George W. Bush giving a lecture on business ethics is like having a leper give you a facial, it just doesn't work!"
- Robin Williams
(Related: Business, Ethics, Giving)
"Now here is a departure from the first principle of true ethics. Here we find ideas of moral wrong and moral right associated with something else than beneficial action. The consequent is, we lose sight of the real basis of morals, and substitute a false one."
- Francis Wright
(Related: Ideas, Action, Departure, Ethics, First, Morals, Now, Right, Sight, Wrong)