It may not have the virtuous ring of the golden rule, but the maxim ‘never say never’ is one of the most important in ethics.

It was important not to offend against the laws of magic. If a woman left you it was because you did not cast the right spell over her, or else because someone else cast a...

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.

A freedom which is interested only in denying freedom must be denied. And it is not true that the recognition of the freedom of others limits my own freedom: to be free is not to...

Both those taking snaps and documentary photographers, however, have not understood ‘information.’ What they produce are camera memories, not information, and the better they do it, the more they prove the victory of the camera...

Each of us would like the ability to do what we want to do, when we want to do it, without incurring the moral approbation of others. We, however, tend to conveniently forget this also...

In wartime, she thought to herself, you don’t call a death murder.

I am closer to a European viewpoint of the world than an American one. My ethics and ideals are based on European concepts.

Ben Franklin said:”Early to bed and early to riseMake a man healthy wealthy and wise”Lately I have read the advice given to William Randolph Hearst, when a young man, by his father:”Go downtown at noon...

One’s email address serves as an identity online and speaks volumes about a person; it may be telling potential clients, partners or employers a whole lot about you: to be hired or fired. Unfortunately most...

There has to be a cut-off somewhere between the freedom of expression and a graphically explicit free-for-all.

He believed that every individual was responsible for his conduct on earth, that there was a judge within. Could even a blazingly Christ inflict greater retribution? Could Dante’s Charon in his rowboat on the river...

Integrity is never given. It is a quality that can only be proven over time.

You can’t do a good deal with a bad guy. The dishonesty tax is too high and is not something you will factor into your side of the equation.

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...

Religion, by its very nature as an untestable belief in undetectable beings and an unknowable afterlife, disables our reality checks. It ends the conversation. It cuts off inquiry: not only factual inquiry, but moral inquiry....

Through our scientific and technological genius we’ve made of this world a neighborhood. And now through our moral and ethical commitment we must make of it a brotherhood. We must all learn to live together...

Small towns may revile you, but they have to keep you-they can’t turn you away.

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.

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....

Morality is always derivative. It stems from one’s worldview.

One peculiarity of our present [ethical] climate is that we care much more about our rights than about our ‘good’. For previous thinkers about ethics, such as those who wrote the Upanishads, or Confucius, or...

Innocence could be lost more than once after all.

… luckily, Eden is soon populated. The ethical dimension begins when the other appears on the scene.

Even a purely moral act that has no hope of any immediate and visible political effect can gradually and indirectly, over time, gain in political significance.

Rationality belongs to the cool observer, but because of the stupidity of the average man, he follows not reason, but faith, and the naive faith requires necessary illusion and emotionally potent oversimplifications which are provided...

No justification of virtue will enable a man to be virtuous. Without the aid of trained emotions the intellect is powerless against the animal organism. I had sooner play cards against a man who was...

We stay the same as we’ve always been, keeping to the path we’ve walked our whole lives. Paths that carry so much importance and perceived stability that we are utterly convinced it is the only...

Every skill and every inquiry, and similarly every action and rational choice, is thought to aim at some good; and so the good had been aptly described as that at which everything aims.

Those who wish even to focus on the problem of a Christian ethic are faced with an outrageous demand-from the outset they must give up, as inappropriate to this topic, the very two questions that...

How does this prove it? What exactly is a proof, what is logical inference, what is contradiction, what is truth, what is falsehood?” Thus, the third field is necessary because of the second, and the...

Explaining the unknown should be left to science, questions of good and bad behavior can be answered by ethics, and inspiration is often found in the arts. There’s no longer a need for the social...

The only justice is to follow the sincere intuition of the soul, angry or gentle. Anger is just, and pity is just, but judgement is never just.

Human beings are never to be treated as a means but always as ends.

ethics is at the center of both spiritual practice and social transformation. Without a strong ethical foundation, we inevitably fall into contradictions-between means and ends, between our actions and our ideals.” (p. 9)

Thus I assume that to each according to his threat advantage is not a conception of justice.

Every man who begets a free act projects his personality into the infinite. If he gives a poor man a penny grudgingly, that penny pierces the poor man’s hand, falls, pierces the earth, bores holes...

So far as I can tell, most worthwhile pleasures on this earth slip between gratifying another and gratifying oneself. Some would call that an ethics.

It is in your own power to maintain the beauty of your soul, or to be a decent human being.

You bite the hand that feeds, Speedy said.Humans don’t like that.They view it as a sign of ingratitude.I never asked anyone to feed me.That doesn’t seem to matter to them.

Cheats prosper until there are enough who bear grudges against them to make sure they do not prosper.

The word “rights”, is something that governments need to provide you and protect you from but, the governments are the basic violators of all human rights.

Nothing that is morally wrong can be politically right.

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...

Let us understand, once for all, that the ethical progress of society depends, not on imitating the cosmic process, still less in running away from it, but in combating it.

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...