It took a couple of months before we were both convinced there were no rules about sexual activities in Hell and our spouses were not going to show up out of the blue. It was...

Blessedness is not the reward of virtue, but virtue itself.

Satan, on the contrary, is thin, ascetic and a fanatical devotee of logic. He reads Machiavelli, Ignatius of Loyola, Marx and Hegel; he is cold and unmerciful to mankind, out of a kind of mathematical...

Virtue is more to be feared than vice, because its excesses are not subject to the regulation of conscience.

About once or twice every month I engage in public debates with those whose pressing need it is to woo and to win the approval of supernatural beings. Very often, when I give my view...

By the way, I never realized that to be nonbelieving, to be an atheist, was a thing to be proud of. It went without saying as it were….Our creed is indeed a queer creed. You...

Evolution, energy, and ethics are the core elements that will guide us along the challenging path toward the Life Era: the first – evolution – because a good understanding of our universal roots and of...

No, this isn’t right. I don’t think the people doing it know or care about right and wrong. This is all some kind of show, but I don’t understand it either.

I obviously do everything to be “hard to understand” myself

[E]thical 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...

Many of the innovations in science and philosophy have come from unbelievers, some of whom died for their ‘unbeliefs.’ Without unbelief, we might well be living in the Dark Ages or at least in the...

We love dogs and eat cows not because dogs and cows are fundamentally different–cows, like dogs, have feelings, preferences, and consciousness–but because our perception of them is different.

It is a tragicomic fact that our proper upbringing has become an ally of the secret police. (…) The “Tell the truth!” imperative drummed into us so automatically that we feel ashamed of lying even...

In happiness and suffering, in joy and grief, we should regard all creatures as we regard our own self.

There are no snares more dangerous than those which lurk under the guise of duty or the name of relationship.

This is biblical ethics. It has little to do with the middle-class ethics of avoiding a few things which are supposed to be wrong and doing a few things which are supposed to be right....

It is taboo in our society to criticize a persons religious faith… these taboos are offensive, deeply unreasonable, but worse than that, they are getting people killed. This is really my concern. My concern is...

Une éthique véritablement socialiste, c’est-à-dire qui cherche la justice sans supprimer la liberté, qui impose aux individus des charges mais sans abolir l’individualité, se trouvera fort embarrassée par les problèmes que pose la condition de...

And not just the right thing; it’s profoundly the right thing to do, because the one argument for accessibility that doesn’t get made nearly often enough is how extraordinarily better it makes some people’s lives....

If truth and moral values are relative, one cannot claim that certain human rights are universally applicable to all cultures and all people.

It is reasonable that everyone who asks justice should do justice

Now there are quite a lot of things which these two men could agree in doing for their fellow citizens. Both would approve of efficient sewers and hospitals and a healthy diet. But sooner or...

It is now an easy matter to spell out the ethic of a truth: ‘Do all that you can to persevere in that which exceeds you perseverance. Persevere in the interruption. Seize in your being...

What is law? Is it what is on the books, or what is actually enacted and obeyed in a society? Or is law what must be enacted and obeyed, whether or not it is on...

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...

The fact that no limits exist to the destructiveness of this weapon [the ‘Super’, i.e. the hydrogen bomb] makes its very existence and the knowledge of its construction a danger to humanity as a whole....

There are rules and ethics that companies have to follow and should not breach.

The most disadvantageous peace is better than the most just war.

Buddha wrote a code which he said would be useful to guide men in darkness, but he never claimed to be the Light of the world. Buddhism was born with a disgust for the world,...

Action indeed is the sole medium of expression for ethics.

I think therefore I am.}, since the cogito, if used rightly, is the awareness of pure consciousness, not directed at any fact or action. In fact the I is not necessary here, since it is...

…ethics were in most cases a burden that could be reasonably ignored in pursuit of necessity.

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...

Media work needs ideals. Maybe thirty years from now, after I retire, I’ll see the media mature and make the transition from political party, interest group, and corporate to truly public. But over the next...

It’s not doing what is right that’s hard for a President. It’s knowing what is right.

Pleasure is Nature’s test, her sign of approval.

[…] like any human practices, those of religions are not exempt from ethical questioning. Rituals and rites in groups change behavior, sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse. For the madness of crowds is...

Ego makes you lonely.

Think of it.” Now he is speaking to you, no one but you. “It may not matter what we want for science, or what we think is ethical. All we must do is provide the...

Perhaps the hopes I have confessed to are of an illusory nature, too. But I hold fast to one distinction. Apart from the fact that no penalty is imposed for not sharing them, my illusions...

We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful.

The values most important to us are always the most easily exploitable.

He is not prone to remember evils, since it is proper to a magnanimous person not to nurse memories, especially not of evils, but to overlook them. He does not speak evil even of his...

A father acts on behalf of his children by working, providing, intervening, struggling, and suffering for them. In so doing, he really stands in their place. He is not an isolated individual, but incorporates the...

You know yourself what you are worth in your own eyes; and at what price you will sell yourself. For men sell themselves at various prices. This is why, when Florus was deliberating whether he...

Since I was a small girl, I have lived inside this cottage, shelted by its roof and walls. I have known of people suffering—I have not been blind to them in the way that privilege...

To recognize untruth as a condition of life–that certainly means resisting accustomed value feelings in a dangerous way; and a philosophy that risks this would by that token alone place itself beyond good and evil.

When we ask people to live their lives through our models, we are potentially reducing life itself. How can we ever know what we might be losing?

Act so as to elicit the best in others and thereby in thyself.

Lots of things that smell are legal. But if a candidate is putting an emphasis on ethics, then he has an obligation that the spirit of the law be adhered to, not just the letter.