Ethics quotations

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◆ Whatever is my right as a man is also the right of another; and it becomes my duty to guarantee as well as to possess.

- Thomas Paine99

◆ For, after all, how do we know that two and two make four? Or that the force of gravity works? Or that the past is unchangeable? If both the past and the external world exist only in the mind, and if the mind itself is controllable – what then?

- George Orwell99

◆ Think occasionally of the suffering of which you spare yourself the sight.

- Albert Schweitzer99

◆ I count him braver who overcomes his desires than him who overcomes his enemies.

- Aristotle99

◆ I suppose therefore that all things I see are illusions; I believe that nothing has ever existed of everything my lying memory tells me. I think I have no senses. I believe that body, shape, extension, motion, location are functions. What is there then that can be taken as true? Perhaps only this one thing, that nothing at all is certain.

- René Descartes99

◆ A person may cause evil to others not only by his actions but by his inaction, and in either case he is justly accountable to them for the injury.

- John Stuart Mill99

◆ Rejection is an opportunity for your selection.

- Bernard Branson99

◆ Create all the happiness you are able to create; remove all the misery you are able to remove. Every day will allow you, --will invite you to add something to the pleasure of others, --or to diminish something of their pains.

- Jeremy Bentham99

◆ We keep on being told that religion, whatever its imperfections, at least instills morality. On every side, there is conclusive evidence that the contrary is the case and that faith causes people to be more mean, more selfish, and perhaps above all, more stupid.

- Christopher Hitchens99

◆ People often say that humans have always eaten animals, as if this is a justification for continuing the practice. According to this logic, we should not try to prevent people from murdering other people, since this has also been done since the earliest of times.

- Isaac Bashevis Singer99

◆ We have a choice. We have two options as human beings. We have a choice between conversation and war. That's it. Conversation and violence. And faith is a conversation stopper.

- Sam Harris99

◆ The great source of both the misery and disorders of human life, seems to arise from over-rating the difference between one permanent situation and another. Avarice over-rates the difference between poverty and riches: ambition, that between a private and a public station: vain-glory, that between obscurity and extensive reputation. The person under the influence of any of those extravagant passions, is not only miserable in his actual situation, but is often disposed to disturb the peace of society, in order to arrive at that which he so foolishly admires. The slightest observation, however, might satisfy him, that, in all the ordinary situations of human life, a well-disposed mind may be equally calm, equally cheerful, and equally contented. Some of those situations may, no doubt, deserve to be preferred to others: but none of them can deserve to be pursued with that passionate ardour which drives us to violate the rules either of prudence or of justice; or to corrupt the future tranquillity of our minds, either by shame from the remembrance of our own folly, or by remorse from the horror of our own injustice.

- Adam Smith99

◆ The law of evolution is that the strongest survives!' 'Yes, and the strongest, in the existence of any social species, are those who are most social. In human terms, most ethical...There is no strength to be gained from hurting one another. Only weakness.

- Ursula K. Le Guin99

◆ Imaginary evil is romantic and varied; real evil is gloomy, monotonous, barren, boring. Imaginary good is boring; real good is always new, marvelous, intoxicating.

- Simone Weil99

◆ As you continue to successfully make each day better than the last, choosing to make great decisions that are not only ambitious, but ethical and morally right as well, things will really start to get simpler.

- Anurag Prakash Ray99