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Ethics Quotes

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Ethics Quotes

“Ethics occupies a central place in philosophy because it is concerned with sin, with the origin of good and evil and with moral valuations. And since these problems have a universal significance, the sphere of ethics is wider than is generally supposed. It deals with meaning and value and its province is the world in which the distinction between good and evil is drawn, evaluations are made and meaning is sought.”

WorldMadePhilosophyProblemValuesEvilSinDealsMoralEthicsConcernedUniversalDistinctionGood And EvilSignificanceSpheresProvincesEvaluationValuation
Author:Nikolai Berdyaev
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“As the dominant social ethic changed from a religious to a secular one, the problem of heresy disappeared, and the problem of madness arose and became of great social significance. In the next chapter I shall examine the creation of social deviants, and shall show that as formerly priests had manufactured heretics, so physicians, as the new guardians of social conduct and morality, began to manufacture madmen.”

ShowsProblemNextSocialReligiousCreationChangedMoralityEthicsMadnessPriestsSignificanceChaptersSecularPhysiciansDominantGuardianHeresyMadmenHereticDeviantsNext Chapter
Author:Thomas Szasz
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“Peace is never long preserved by weight of metal or by an armament race. Peace can be made tranquil and secure only by understanding and agreement fortified by sanctions. We must embrace international cooperation or international disintegration. Science has taught us how to put the atom to work. But to make it work for good instead of for evil lies in the domain dealing with the principles of human dignity. We are now facing a problem more of ethics than of physics.”

HumansLongMadeProblemLyingEvilUnderstandingRacePrinciplesTaughtEthicsDignityWeightEmbraceInternationalPhysicsSecureAgreementCooperationAtomsMetalsDomainSanctionsTranquilTaught UsHuman DignityArmamentDisintegrationInternational Cooperation
Author:Bernard Baruch
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“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, when a prince's son deserted his wife and child, turning from the pleasures of existence to the problems of existence. Burnt by the fires of the world, and already weary with it, Buddha turned to ethics.”

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Book:Life of Christ
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“We Americans are not an inherently more violent people than folks in other countries. We're not inherently more prone to mental health problems. The main difference that sets our nation apart is what makes us so susceptible to so many mass shootings is that we don't do enough, we don't take the basic commonsense actions to keep guns out of the hands of criminals and dangerous people. What's different in America is it's easy to get your hands on a gun.”

PeopleDifferentCountryEnoughProblemHandsActionAmericaPoliticsNationsEasyCommunityDifferencesCommonViolenceDangerousHuman NaturePolicyMassEthicsGunMental HealthFolksCriminalsViolentCommon SenseShootingOther CountriesEasy To GetSusceptibleHealth ProblemsMass Shootings
Author:Barack Obama
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“Now, here's a good question: should serious people focus on global political instability - terrorism, failing states, nuclear weapons - or should we focus on global climate instability - droughts, floods, extreme weather? Here's the correct answer: yes, both, because climate disruption will make every other national security problem worse.”

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Author:Van Jones
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“People ask, 'Is the science going to run ahead of the ethics?' I don't think that's always the problem. I think it's that the science runs ahead of the politics. Bioethics can alert people to something coming down the road, but it doesn't mean policy and politicians are going to pay attention. They tend to respond when there's an immediate crisis. The job of the ethicist, in some ways, is to warn or be prophetic. You can yell loudly, but you can't necessarily get everybody to leave the cinema, so to speak.”

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Author:Arthur Caplan
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“The other side of my work is political disappointment - the realization that we are living in an unjust world. "Blood is being spilled in the merriest way, as if it was champagne," Dostoevsky says. That raises the problem of justice, what it might mean in an unjust world and whether there can be an ethics and a political practice that would be able to face and face down the injustice of the present. How might we begin to think about that?”

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Author:Simon Critchley
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“The ethics of sex is a thorny problem. Each of us is forced to grope for a solution he can live with - in the face of preposterous, unworkable, and evil code of so-called 'Morals.' Most of us know the code is wrong, almost everybody breaks it. But we pay Danegeld by feeling guilty and giving lip service. Willy-nilly, the code rides us, dead and stinking, an albatross around the neck.”

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Book:Stranger in a Strange Land
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“[T]he central problem of government is a religious one; and anyone who assumes that he can form his political beliefs without consulting his ethics, which have their basis in religious conviction, is deceiving himself either about the true nature of government or his moral responsibility for his actions”

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Author:H. Verlan Andersen
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“I think the Buddhist ethic is clearer and more systematic in some ways. The Buddhist notion is that our chief problems are greed, hatred and delusion. Well, delusion is not much mentioned in the Christian tradition. In the West, we have underplayed the idea that our moral and spiritual troubles have to do with a lack of clarity or insight because original sin has dominated so much of our thinking. We tend to think that our troubles are caused by insufficient will power.”

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Author:Ninian Smart
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“The characteristics that I look for when I'm looking for really good entrepreneurs to lead companies are you have to have an inquiring mind, you have to say there must be a better way to do things, and now with technology at a point where everything is possible, how do we turn the possible into the probable? And it all starts with a passion to do something really well, to solve a problem in a way that's never been solved before, and to have just an incredible work ethic, to be persistent.”

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Author:John Sculley
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“Rather than bring the full force of our creativity and rationality to bear on the problems of ethics, social cohesion, and even spiritual experience, moderates merely ask that we relax our standard of adherence to ancient superstitions and taboos, while otherwise maintaining a belief system that was passed down to us from men and women whose lives were simply ravaged by their basic ignorance about the world.”

MenWorldProblemSpiritualAsksBeliefForceSocialCreativityIgnoranceBearsStandardsEthicsMen And WomenAncientRelaxSuperstitionsRationalityMaintainingModeratesTabooBelief SystemsSpiritual ExperienceCohesionAdherence
Book:The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason
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“The problem of vindicating an omnipotent and omniscient God in the face of evil is insurmountable. Those who claim to have surmounted it, by recourse to notions of free will and other incoherencies, have merely heaped bad philosophy onto bad ethics.”

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Book:The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason
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“Thought cannot avoid the ethical or reverence and love for all life. It will abandon the old confined systems of ethics and be forced to recognize the ethics that knows no bounds. But on the other hand, those who believe in love for all creation must realize clearly the difficulties involved in the problem of a boundless ethic and must be resolved not to veil from humankind the conflicts which this ethic will involve us, but allow us really to experience them. To think out in every implication the ethic of love for all creation this is the difficult task which confronts our age.”

ThinkingKnowsBelieveProblemHandsAgeDifficultRealizingCreationInvolvedConflictEthicsTasksAnd LoveDifficultyBoundsAbandonEthicalInspirational LoveReverenceHumankindVeilsConfinedImplicationsBoundlessBelieve In LoveDifficult Tasks
Author:Albert Schweitzer
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“In our struggle against racial segregation in Montgomery, Alabama, I came to see at a very early stage that a synthesis of Gandhi's method of nonviolence and the Christian ethic of love is the best weapon available to Negroes for this struggle for freedom and human dignity. It may well be that the Gandhian approach will bring about a solution to the race problem in America. His spirit is a continual reminder to oppressed people that it is possible to resist evil and yet not resort to violence.”

PeopleHumansWellsMayProblemChristianAmericaSpiritEvilLove IsRaceStruggleViolenceStageApproachWeaponsSolutionsEthicsDignityMethodAvailableNonviolenceOppressedRemindersResortsSegregationHuman DignityAlabamaSynthesisMontgomeryChristian EthicsStruggle For FreedomRacial Segregation
Author:Martin Luther King, Jr.
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“Human existence cannot be silent, nor can it be nourished by false words, but only by true words, with which people transform the world. To exist, humanly, is to name the world, to change it. Once named, the world in its turn reappears to the namers as a problem and requires of them a new naming. People are not built in silence, but in word, in work, in action-reflection.”

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Author:Paulo Freire
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“It [an ethical problem with in vitro fertilization] depends on whether you're talking ethics from the standpoint of some religious denomination or from just truly religious people. The Jewish or Catholic faiths, for example, have their own rules. But just religious people, who will make very devoted parents, have no problem with in vitro fertilization.”

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Author:Patrick Steptoe
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“The shadow is a moral problem that challenges the whole ego-personality, for no one can become conscious of the shadow without considerable moral effort.”

WholeProblemChallengesEffortMoralPersonalityEgoEthicsConsciousShadowShadow Self
Book:The Collected Works of C. G. Jung: pt. 1. The archetypes and the collective unconscious. pt. 2. Aion, researches into the phenomenology of the self
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“Letting a maximum number of views be heard regularly is not just a nice philosophical notion. It is the best way any society has yet discovered to detect maladjustments quickly, to correct injustices, and to discover new ways to meet our continuing stream of novel problems that rise in a changing environment.”

WayProblemJusticeViewsNumbersNovelEnvironmentNiceHeardSocietyEthicsPhilosophicalNotionInjusticeBest WayStreamsFairnessContinuingNew WaysMaximumChanging EnvironmentMaximum Number
Author:Ben Bagdikian
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“The politics of that year [2004] are old now, but the problem remains the same, the real culture clash of American life. It's between the essence of fundamentalism - paternalism, authority, and charity - and the messy imperatives of democracy, "the din of the vox populi" once derided by Abram Vereide. It's the difference between false unity, preached from above, and real solidarity, pledged between brothers and sisters - the kinds who are always bickering.”

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Author:Jeff Sharlet
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“We all faced painful ethical challenges before we even knew how to spell our names. There were tough choices. Tradeoffs. Confusing signals regarding how to live one's life. And here we are now, today, still struggling. Still trying to sort things out. Still trying to work our way through life effectively. About the only thing that has changed is the scope of the problem. There's more at stake now. And we're in a position, as grownups, to do a lot more-good or bad-for ourselves, our organization, our world. But we still must wrestle with our imperfect ethics.”

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Author:Price Pritchett
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“There are problems to whose solution I would attach an infinitely greater importance than to those of mathematics, for example touching ethics, or our relation to God, or concerning our destiny and our future; but their solution lies wholly beyond us and completely outside the province of science.”

ProblemScienceLyingDestinyGreaterExampleSolutionsEthicsImportanceRelationMathematicsMathMathematicalTouchingOur FutureOur DestinyProvincesMath ProblemsGreat MathMathematical Problems
Author:Carl Friedrich Gauss
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“For some days I quietly worked out in my own mind the metaphysics of Cosmic Unity. The more I thought about it, the more convinced I became that it was the living truth. It was logically incontrovertible. It provided for the first time a firm foundation for ethics. It offered mankind the radical change of heart and mind that was our only hope of peace at a time of desperate danger. Only one small problem remained. I must find a way to convert the world to my way of thinking.”

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Author:Freeman Dyson
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“The 'key-log' which must be moved to release the evolutionary process for an ethic is simply this: quit thinking about decent land-use as solely an economic problem. Examine each question in terms of what is ethically and esthetically right, as well as what is economically expedient. A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise.”

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Author:Land ethic
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“Bad habits are easy and discipline is hard-and “easy” is where people gravitate. A good work ethic requires a painstaking daily effort. Easy typically leads to a life long list of problems but the discipline of having a plan leads to an extraordinary rewarding life. In the long run, the easy way makes life harder and the harder way makes life easier.”

PeopleWayLongHardProblemRunningEasyEffortPlansHabitDisciplineEasierEthicsHarderExtraordinaryListsLong RunsGood WorkWork EthicLong LifeBad HabitsEasy WayGood Work Ethic
Author:Tony Horton
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