Bonhoeffer examined and dismissed a number of approaches to dealing with evil. “Reasonable people,” he said, think that “with a little reason, they can pull back together a structure that has come apart at the...

To be ethical is to endeavor to find one’s proper place in the larger scheme of things rather than to seek to assert human superiority over the natural world.

What good does it do to tell somebody to live morally so they can die 50 years later and apparently go to Hell?

Face the complexity involved in making ethical choices.

Ethics is a skill

Each of us lives with a sword over his head.There are those who can ignore its shadow and those who cannot. Those who cannot are not necessarily better than those who can. But they are...

He sells his loyalties to the highest bidder. Shouldn’t even a mercenary have morals? That’s the textbook definition of a whore!

May we think of freedom not as the right to do as we please but as the opportunity to do what is right.

What one generation finds ridiculous, the next accepts; and the third shudders when it looks back on what the first did.

Improving the world can be a nasty and ugly and difficult and dangerous business…because when you improve the world, you threaten the entrenched interests of evil people.

Jesus was not content to derive his ethics from the scriptures of his upbringing. He explicitly departed from them. […] Since a principal thesis of this chapter is that we do not, and should not,...

In Mere Christianity, C. S. Lewis argues that human beings cannot be truly good or moral without faith in God and without submis- sion to the will of Christ. Unfortunately, Lewis does not provide any...

It is my conviction that, with the spread of true scientific culture, whatever may be the medium, historical, philological, philosophical, or physical, through which that culture is conveyed, and with its necessary concomitant, a constant...

Where there is not community, trust, respect, ethical behavior are difficult for the young to learn and for the old to maintain.

All laws which can be violated without doing any one any injury are laughed at. Nay, so far are they from doing anything to control the desires and passions of men that, on the contrary,...

A world without esoteric knowledge is a poorer place and we as a humanity pay the price for the loss of its principles.

You believe stealing is wrong, but if your family was starving and could not afford bread, wouldn’t you say it’s okay to steal a loaf to feed them?

An open mind, in questions that are not ultimate, is useful. But an open mind about the ultimate foundations either of Theoretical or of Practical Reason is idiocy. If a man’s mind is open on...

We’d do well to remember that at the end of the day, the law doesn’t defend us; we defend the law. And when it becomes contrary to our morals, we have both the right and...

From the beginning, from the age of Adam to the time of kingship: from the powerful, pardon: from the poor, sins.

All ethics and morals are culturally relative. And Esme’s reaction taught me that while cultural relativism is an easy concept to process intellectually, it is not, for many, an easy one to remember.

I stand in philosophy exactly where I stand in daily life; I should not be honest otherwise.

Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure. It is for them alone to point out what we ought to do, as well as to determine what we shall...

Not everyone can be bribed with meat, Oberon.” “They Can’t? Oh! you mean they’re vegetarian.””No, they eat meat. It just doesn’t sway their decision making process.” “Well that… that’s just wrong, Atticus!Are they Monsters? It’s...

When we lift our forks, we hang our hats somewhere. We set ourselves in one relationship or another to farmed animals, farm-workers, national economies, and global markets. Not making a decision–eating ‘like everyone else’–is to...

Wherever morality is based on theology, wherever right is made dependent on divine authority, the most immoral, unjust, infamous things can be justified and established.

The sign of a good conscience is for a man to be in support of basically everything that Westboro Baptist isn’t.

You think you’re superior to the others, don’t you? We’ll you’re not. In fact you’re worse for mistaking basic human decency for moral superiority.

Why give a robot an order to obey orders—why aren’t the original orders enough? Why command a robot not to do harm—wouldn’t it be easier never to command it to do harm in the first...

You know, kid, ethics isn’t about choosing between right and wrong; it’s about choosing between grey and grey. It’s about choosing between two equally desirable but mutually exclusive courses of action. Freedom or security? Courage...

He that doth not as other men do, but endeavoureth that which ought to be done, shall thereby rather incur peril than preservation; for whoso laboureth to be sincerely perfect and good shall necessarily perish,...

playing God.” Human authorities arrogate to themselves rights which belong only to God. God is under no obligation whatsoever to extend my life for another second. If He wanted to strike me dead right now,...

With discipline, you are able to maintain a higher tolerance for frustration, obstacles and negative emotions. Self-discipline allows you to obtain better health, better finances and a good work ethic, and it allows you to...

The search for scapegoats is essentially an abnegation of responsibility: it indicates an inability to assess honestly and intelligently the true nature of the problems which lie at the root of social and economic difficulties...

One’s interest or need does not annul other’s right.

By 2030, says the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, fish farming will dominate fish supplies. Given how wrong the FAO has been in the past–saying catches were going up when, in fact, they were going...

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...

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

The relation to the other is not epistemological, but ethical, and the whole attempt to accomodate or account for the other within the confines of my experience already constitutes a breach of this fundamental ethical...

Good ethics are the best cosmetics to always apply

Our Blessed Lord left the world without leaving any written message. His doctrine was Himself. Ideal and History were identified in Him. The truth that all other ethical teachers proclaimed, and the light that they...

For we conceive it as the aim of a philosopher, as such, to do somewhat more than define and formulate the common normal opinions of mankind. His function is to tell men what they ought...

Gray is not a substitute for black and white. You don’t bump into people without saying you’re sorry. When you shake hands, it’s supposed to mean something. If someone is in trouble, you reach out.

They want a group of people on the House Ethics Committee who are going to go to extraordinary lengths to keep Tom DeLay from going down or being embarrassed yet again, which embarrasses them all,...

War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things: the decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth a war, is much worse. When a people...

Our stable and eternal verities are being challenged. There’s a kind of postmodern breakdown in journalism. The breadth of information sources and the speed of transmission are growing; but the traditional gravity of news has...

Similarly with regard to truth, won’t we say that a soul is maimed if it hates a voluntary falsehood, cannot endure to have one in itself, and is greatly angered when it exists in others,...

The disappearance of a sense of responsibility is the most far-reaching consequence of submission to authority.

The only thing that guarantees an open-ended collaboration among human beings, the only thing that guarantees that this project is truly open-ended, is a willingness to have our beliefs and behaviors modified by the power...

The witch who claims to forbear her magick for fear of causing the next Indian tsunami is really saying that she is powerful enough to kill thousands of innocent strangers when all she meant to...