Ethics Quotes - Page 4

To act without rapacity to use knowledge with wisdom to respect interdependence to operate without hubris and greed are not simply moral imperatives. They are an accurate scientific description of the means of survival.

Laws and a settled decision procedure to generate them are a good thing. This gives us one important reason for obeying the law. By obeying the law, I can contribute to the respect in which the established decision procedure and the laws are held. By disobeying, I set an example to others that may lead them to disobey too.

If it were necessary either to do wrong or to suffer it, I should choose to suffer rather than do it.

Anxiety can make anybody act nasty, big or small. You will be tested for your strength, and if you are seen as too weak, you will sometimes be treated abusively, discarded and avoided. I'm not saying that this should happen. I'm simply describing human beings as they are.

Always polish the dirt for a refreshing start and seek out to build new mental structures that can help you to become rejuvenated.

Without man and his potential for moral progress, the whole of reality would be a mere wilderness, a thing in vain, and have no final purpose.

Despite the fact that an Indonesian island chicken has probably had a much more natural life than one raised on a battery farm in England, people who wouldn't think twice about buying something oven-ready become much more upset about a chicken that they've been on a boat with, so there is probably buried in the Western psyche a deep taboo about eating anything you've been introduced to socially.

I don't believe vegans (or vegetarians) who still get their (packaged, preservative/chemical-ridden) food from industrial food systems have any righteous ground to stand on, nor do I think a deep look at the sentient life of plants or the true environmental impact of agriculture permits them any comfortable distance from cruelty. Everything in this world eats something else to survive, and that something else, whether running on blood or chlorophyll, would always rather continue to live rather than become sustenance for another. No animal wants to be penned up and milked, or caged and harvested, and you've never seen plants growing in regimented lines of their own accord.

Some people that are in charge are usually less intelligent than the people who work under them. The reason why those people are in charge and you aren’t is because you have a conscience.

Think before you click. If people do not know you personally and if they cannot see you as you type, what you post online can be taken out of context if you are not careful in the way your message is delivered.

He was impregnably armored by his good intentions and his ignorance.

All religions are man-made God has not yet revealed himself beyond doubt to anybody.

What ranks above all else for economic and political reconstruction is a radical change of ideologies. Economic prosperity is not so much a material problem; it is, first of all, an intellectual, spiritual, and moral problem.

What you withhold in this life will be withheld from you in the next.

Once you come to terms with why you don't eat cats, dogs, monkeys, and dolphins, you will begin to understand why I don't eat cows, pigs, chickens, and lambs.

Spiritual leaders, priests and prophets are lamps burning in the dark, seeking meaning for humanity.

It would be advisable to think of progress in the crudest, most basic terms: that no one should go hungry anymore, that there should be no more torture, no more Auschwitz. Only then will the idea of progress be free from lies.

... As Weber suggests, once science is employed to justify and enact ideal values, especially through the actions of an elite few (the academy), particular values, in this case the idea of what is 'natural', are cast into an objectively valid and legitimate form, and thus appear as being beyond critique. And at this point Weber rightly warns that science, contrary to Durkheim's belief, is not both cognitive and moral in nature, for it rests upon a designation of authority, and may, especially if used beyond its own limits, give rise to new means of domination.

Whenever those immersed in the bureaucratic culture of the age try to think their way through to the moral foundations of what they are and what they do, they will discover suppressed Nietzschean premises. And consequently it is possible to predict with confidence that in the apparently quite unlikely contexts of bureaucratically managed modern societies there will periodically emerge social movements informed by just that kind of prophetic irrationalism of which Nietzsche's thought is the ancestor. Indeed just because and insofar as contemporary Marxism is Weberian in substance we can expect prophetic irrationalisms of the left as well as of the Right.

Sustainability before ambition. Okal Rel.

Below the navel there is neither religion nor truth.

Every man has his moral backside too which he doesn't expose unnecessarily but keeps covered as long as possible by the trousers of decorum.

I would tell young journalists to be brave and go against the tide. When everyone else is relying on the internet, you should not; when nobody's walking, you should walk; when few people are reading profound books, you should read. ... rather than seeking a plusher life you should pursue some hardship. Eat simple food. When everyone's going for quick results, pursue things of lasting value. Don't follow the crowd; go in the opposite direction. If others are fast, be slow. -- Jin Yongquan

Ethical principles stand above the existence of the nation and that by adhering to these principles an individual belongs to the community of all those who share, who have shared, and who will share this belief.

Do not be too moral. You may cheat yourself out of much life. So aim above morality. Be not simply good be good for something.

There's something immoral about abandoning your common sense in matters of social importance.

I used to think the most important thing for a reporter was to be where the news is and be the first to know. Now I feel a reporter should be able to effect change. Your reporting should move people and motivate people to change the world. Maybe this is too idealistic. Young people who want to be journalists must, first, study and, second, recognize that they should never be the heroes of the story. ..A journalist must be curious, and must be humble. --Zhou Yijun

An ethical idealist, a person whom embraces the honorable philosophy of ethical idealism, performs acts that are honest, pure, and righteous regardless of their fearfulness.

And now they were weary and frightened because they had gone against a system they did not understand and it had beaten them. They knew that the team and the wagon were worth much more. They knew the buyer man would get much more, but they didn't know how to do it. Merchandising was a secret to them.

It is an adherent condition of human affairs that no intention, however sincere, of protecting the interests of others can make it safe or salutary to tie up their own hands. Still more obviously true is it, that by their own hands only can any positive and durable improvement of their circumstances in life be worked out.