Ethical Quotes - Page 16

• Necessity is the most powerful divinity the world knows – it is the result of physical forces set in operation by ethical forces.

  Jose Rizal

  Powerful, World, Divinity

  "The Philippines: a Century Hence". Book by José Rizal, archive.org. 1912.

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• Literature is an ethical leap. It is a moral decision. A perilous exercise in constant failure. Literature should have grievances, because there are so many grievances in the world.

  Miguel Syjuco

  Exercise, Should Have, Decision

  Miguel Syjuco (2010). “Ilustrado: A Novel”, p.15, Macmillan

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• Many of us are confessional giants but ethical midgets.

  Mark Buchanan

  Giants, Midget

  Mark Buchanan (2009). “The Holy Wild: Trusting in the Character of God”, p.27, Multnomah

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• I can say-not as a patriotic bromide, but with full knowledge of the necessary metaphysical, epistemological , ethical, political and esthetic roots-that the United States of America is the greatest, the noblest and, in its original founding principles, the only moral country in the history of the world.

  Ayn Rand

  Country, Patriotic, Roots

  Ayn Rand (1988). “The Ayn Rand Lexicon: Objectivism from A to Z”, p.37, Penguin

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• Non-violence is not a passive idea. It is ethical activism at its political best

  Ela Bhatt

  Ideas, Political, Violence

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• You are personally responsible for becoming more ethical than the society you grew up in.

  Eliezer Yudkowsky

  Becoming, Responsible, Grew Up

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• Tom Coburn never forgot that members of Congress are spending the hard-earned money of the people back home. Even a lot of conservatives end up forgetting that. Here's hoping that back in the private sector, Tom Coburn keeps up the fight for his beliefs and that he remains a constant reminder to lawmakers and the White House of ethical standards to which all should aspire.

  John Fund

  Home, Fighting, White

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• Love is the supreme value around which all moral values can be integrated into one ethical system valid for the whole of humanity.

  Pitirim Sorokin

  Love, Humanity, Moral

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• Freemasonry is 'veiled in allegory and illustrated by symbols' because these are the surest way by which moral and ethical truths may be taught. It is not only with the brain and with the mind that the initiate must take Freemasonry but also with the heart.

  Carl H. Claudy

  Heart, Brain, Mind

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• Are we going to continue to yield personal liberties and community autonomy to the steady inexplicable centralization all political power or restore the Republic to Constitutional direction, regain our personal liberties and reassume the individual state's primary responsibility and authority in the conduct of local affairs? Are we going to permit a continuing decline in public and private morality or re-establish high ethical standards as the means of regaining a diminishing faith in the integrity of our public and private institutions?

  Douglas MacArthur

  Integrity, Mean, Responsibility

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• How can we be trusted with big things if we're not trustworthy with things that are small? Don't allow your finer instincts to become a casualty of the little everyday crimes of ethical compromise.

  Price Pritchett

  Trust, Everyday, Littles

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• We are about to enter a new era in which, each year, less net energy will be available to humankind, regardless of our efforts or choices. The only significant choice we will have will be how we adjust to this new regime. That choice - not whether, but how to reduce energy usage and make a transition to renewable alternatives - will have profound ethical and political ramifications.

  Richard Heinberg

  Years, Profound, Choices

  Richard Heinberg (2005). “The Party's Over: Oil, War and the Fate of Industrial Societies”, p.6, CLAIRVIEW BOOKS

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• We can't achieve excellence through talent alone. Or merely by making technological improvements. We can't even buy our way to excellence, no matter how much money we have available to spend. More dollars will never do it. We have to develop a strong corporate conscience. Ethical muscle. And that doesn't happen by accident either.

  Price Pritchett

  Strong, Achievement, Excellence

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• Renunciation is the very basis upon which ethics stands. There never was an ethical code preached which had not renunciation for its basis.

  Swami Vivekananda

  Ethics, Bases, Code

  Swami Vivekananda (2015). “Jnana Yoga: The Yoga of Knowledge”, p.7, editionNEXT.com

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• It cannot be denied that Islam, regarded as an ethical ideal plus a certain kind of polity - by which expression I mean a social structure regulated by a legal system and animated by a specific ethical ideal - has been the chief formative factor in the life-history of the Muslims of India. It has furnished those basic emotions and loyalties which gradually unify scattered individuals and groups, and finally transform them into a well-defined people, possessing a moral consciousness of their own.

  Muhammad Iqbal

  Loyalty, Mean, Expression

  Sir Muhammad Iqbal (2005). “Speeches, Writings, and Statements of Iqbal”

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• To believe in'the greater good' isto operate, necessarily, in a certain ethical suspension.

  Joan Didion

  Believe, Certain, Greater Good

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• I have already indicated to you the meaning of the word religion, as applied to Islam. The truth is that Islam is not a Church. It is a State conceived as a contractual organism long before Rousseau ever thought of such a thing, and animated by an ethical ideal which regards man not as an earth-rooted creature, defined by this or that portion of the earth, but as a spiritual being understood in terms of a social mechanism, and possessing rights and duties as a living factor in that mechanism.

  Muhammad Iqbal

  Spiritual, Men, Rights

  Presidential Address to the 25th Session of the All-India Muslim League, Allahabad, www.columbia.edu. December 29, 1930.

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• Ethical ideas and sentiments have to be considered as parts of the phenomena of life at large. We have to deal with man as a product of evolution, with society as a product of evolution, and with moral phenomena as products of evolution.

  Herbert Spencer

  Men, Ideas, Moral

  Herbert Spencer (1893). “Ethics of Individual Life”

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• Every day we act in ways that reflect our ethical judgements.

  Peter Singer

  Judgement, Everyday, Way

  "The Expanding Circle: Ethics, Evolution, and Moral Progress". Book by Peter Singer, 1981.

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• Just as the philanthropist is the nuisance of the ethical sphere, so the nuisance of the intellectual sphere is the man who is so occupied in trying to educate others, that he has never had any time to educate himself.

  Oscar Wilde

  Men, Intellectual, Trying

  Oscar Wilde, General Press (2016). “The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde: Novel, Short Stories, Poetry, Essays and Plays”, p.692, GENERAL PRESS

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• The ethical regime [of the Jews] was quite definitely Ptolemaic, revolving around the small group of Jews, not the larger Gentile group and, accordingly, they learned to remain unimpressed by Gentile temporal power. Being unimpressed did not mean being unafraid material power might beat or starve one to death; it did mean refusing to surrender moral hegemony to the majority merely because it had power.

  David Riesman

  Mean, Might, Majority

  "Individualism Reconsidered". Book by David Riesman, 1954.

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• The ethical decision is always the fearsome decision. When something matters enough that we are afraid of the consequences - afraid that even the honorable choice could result in harm or loss or sorrow - that's when ethics are involved.

  Henry W. Bloch

  Loss, Choices, Decision

  "Stand for the Best: What I Learned after Leaving My Job as CEO". Book by Thomas M. Bloch, 2010.

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• Do you know this Sanskrit Shloka: "Let those who are versed in the ethical codes praise or blame, let Lakshmi, the goddess of Fortune, come or go wherever she wisheth, let death overtake him today or after a century, the wise man never swerves from the path of rectitude." Let people praise you or blame you, let fortune smile or frown upon you, let your body fall today or after a Yuga, see that you do not deviate from the path of Truth.

  Swami Vivekananda

  Wise, Fall, Men

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• In reality no food is valued solely for its nutritive power and no garment or house solely for the protection it affords against cold weather and rain.... the demand for goods is widely influenced by metaphysical, religious, and ethical considerations, by aesthetic value judgments, by customs, habits, prejudice, tradition, changing fashions, and many other things.

  Ludwig von Mises

  Religious, Fashion, Rain

  Ludwig von Mises (2016). “Human Action”, p.290, Lulu Press, Inc

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• Perhaps most important, judges will have goals. And because this is so, judges will often try to mold and steer the law in order to promote certain ethical values and achieve certain social ends. Such activity is not necessarily wrong or invalid.

  Elena Kagan

  Order, Law, Goal

  "Kagan's thesis hints at her views" by Josh Gerstein, www.politico.com. May 18, 2010.

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