Ethical Principles Quotes

• Ethics and equity and the principles of justice do not change with the calendar.

  D. H. Lawrence

  Justice, Judging, Calendars

  "Medical Ethics and Humanities". Book by Frederick Adolf Paola, Robert Walker, Lois LaCivita Nixon, March 9, 2010.

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• At the descriptive level, certainly, you would expect different cultures to develop different sorts of ethics and obviously they have; that doesn't mean that you can't think of overarching ethical principles you would want people to follow in all kinds of places.

  Peter Singer

  Mean, Thinking, People

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• "Rituals" don't make you righteous, it's uprightness: living up to moral principles and ethical principles, and submitting to universal law established by God.

  Louis Farrakhan

  Law, Moral, Righteous

  Source: www.finalcall.com

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• In the past, the respect people had for religion meant that ethical practice was maintained through a majority following one religion or another. But this is no longer the case. We must therefore find some other way of establishing basic ethical principles.

  Dalai Lama

  Past, Practice, People

  The Dalai Lama, Alexander Norman (2010). “Ancient Wisdom, Modern World: Ethics for the New Millennium”, p.5, Hachette UK

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• I want to show that there are indeed some universal ethical principles which could help everyone to achieve the happiness we all aspire to.

  Dalai Lama

  Want, Ethics, Helping

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• Buddhism’s cardinal ethical principle is to avoid causing harm.

  Gil Fronsdal

  Buddhism, Harm, Cardinals

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• Out of our first century of national life we evolved the ethical principle that it was not right or just that an honest and industrious man should live and die in misery. He was entitled to some degree of sympathy and security. Our conscience declared against the honest workman's becoming a pauper, but our eyes told us that he very often did.

  Frances Perkins

  Eye, Men, Justice

  Frances Perkins (1934). “People at work”

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• I think that my strong determination for justice comes from the very strong, dynamic personality of my father ... I have rarely ever met a person more fearless and courageous than my father ... The thing that I admire most about my dad is his genuine Christian character. He is a man of real integrity, deeply committed to moral and ethical principles. He is conscientious in all of his undertakings ... If I had a problem I could always call Daddy.

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Christian, Fathers Day, Strong

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• I wanted to see what it means to think about taking responsibility for one's own desires and choosing to foreground desire as an ethical principle. I also wanted to find ways of asking what the limits of agency are for subjectivities that are not unmarked or hegemonic.

  Richard Marshall

  Mean, Responsibility, Thinking

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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• The Greatest evils inflicted by man over the face of the Earth are wrought not by the self-seekers, the pleasure lovers, or the merely amoral, but by the fervent devotees of ethical principles.

  Robert Morrison MacIver

  Men, Self, Evil

  Robert Morrison MacIver (2005). “Politics and Society”, p.174, Transaction Publishers

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• Genuine tragedy is a case not of right against wrong but of right against right - two equally justified ethical principles embodied in people of unchangeable will.

  Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

  Two, People, Tragedy

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• The overriding need is "to develop a new Planetary Humanism" that will seek to preserve human rights and enhance human freedom and dignity and will emphasize our commitment "to humanity as a whole." The underlying ethical principle "is the need to respect the dignity and worth of all persons in the world community." Thinkers as diverse as Peter Singer and Hans Küng also emphasize the need for a new global ethic beyond nationalistic, racial, religious, and ethnic chauvinism.

  Paul Kurtz

  Religious, Commitment, Rights

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• No man may initiate the use of physical force against others. No man-or group or society or government-has the right to assume the role of a criminal and initiate the use of physical compulsion against any man. Men have the right to use physical force only in retaliation and only against those who initiate its use. The ethical principle involved is simple and clear-cut: it is the difference between murder and self-defense.

  Ayn Rand

  Cutting, Simple, Men

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• Passive resistance seeks to rejoin politics and religion and to test all our actions in the light of ethical principles.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  Light, Passive Resistance, Religion

  Mahatma Gandhi, Anthony J. Parel (1997). “Gandhi: 'Hind Swaraj' and Other Writings”, p.146, Cambridge University Press

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• It is possible to believe in progress as a fact without believing in progress as an ethical principle; but in the catechism of many Americans, the one goes with the other.

  Norbert Wiener

  Believe, Progress, Facts

  Norbert Wiener (1988). “The Human Use of Human Beings: Cybernetics and Society”, p.42, Da Capo Press

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• And so we shall have to do more than register and more than vote; we shall have to create leaders who embody virtues we can respect, who have moral and ethical principles we can applaud with enthusiasm.

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Leader, Enthusiasm, Moral

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• My own view, which does not rely solely on religious faith or even on an original idea, but rather on ordinary common sense, is that establishing binding ethical principles is possible when we take as our starting point the observation that we all desire happiness and wish to avoid suffering.

  Dalai Lama

  Religious, Views, Ideas

  The Dalai Lama, Alexander Norman (2010). “Ancient Wisdom, Modern World: Ethics for the New Millennium”, p.22, Hachette UK

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• Sir John Templeton: "My ethical principle in the first place was: 'Where could I use my talents that God gave me to help the most people?'"

  Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

  People, Use, Firsts

  Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (2004). “Good Business: Leadership, Flow, and the Making of Meaning”, p.78, Penguin

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• 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. It is necessarily an evil thing considered in any light. For these reasons, we believe it important for the President of the United States to tell the American public and the world what we think is wrong on fundamental ethical principles to initiate the development of such a weapon.

  Enrico Fermi

  Believe, Thinking, Light

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• The Earth Charter is important as an expression of the commitment of people throughout the Earth to evoke their own deepest moral, spiritual and ethical principles in the task of ensuring a sustainable future for those who inhabit the Earth now and those who will follow us on the Earth.

  Maurice Strong

  God, Spiritual, Future

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• The only ethical principle which has made science possible is that the truth shall be told all the time. If we do not penalize false statements made in error, we open up the way for false statements by intention. And a false statement of fact, made deliberately, is the most serious crime a scientist can commit.

  Dorothy L. Sayers

  Integrity, Errors, Way

  Dorothy L. Sayers (2012). “Gaudy Night”, p.495, Open Road Media

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• There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And an outstanding reason for choosing some sort of God or spiritual-type thing to worship - be it J.C. or Allah, be it Yahweh or the Wiccan mother-goddess or the Four Noble Truths or some infrangible set of ethical principles - is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive.

  David Foster Wallace

  Mother, Spiritual, Worship You

  "'Plain Old Untrendy Troubles and Emotions'". www.theguardian.com. September 19, 2008.

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• Perhaps, indeed, there are no truly universal ethics: or to put it more precisely, the ways in which ethical principles are interpreted will inevitably differ across cultures and eras. Yet, these differences arise chiefly at the margins. All known societies embrace the virtues of truthfulness, integrity, loyalty, fairness; none explicitly endorse falsehood, dishonesty, disloyalty, gross inequity. (Five Minds for the Future, p136)

  Howard Gardner

  Loyalty, Integrity, Differences

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• Olympism seeks to create a way of life based on the joy found in effort, the educational value of a good example and respect for universal fundamental ethical principles.

  Pierre de Coubertin

  Respect, Educational, Joy

  Pierre de Coubertin, Norbert Müller (2000). “Olympism: Selected Writings”, Lausanne, Switzerland : International Olympic Committee

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