Ethics

Quotes & Thinkers in Ethics

73 thinkers

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"When the intensity of emotional conviction subsides, a man who is in the habit of reasoning will search for logical grounds in favour of the belief which he finds in himself."

"Is it reasonable to assume a purposiveness in all the parts of nature and to deny it to the whole?"

"Education is the kindling of a flame, not the filling of a vessel."

"...this our world, which is so real, with all its suns and milky ways is—nothing."

157 quotes

🇫🇷Albert Camus

Literature

continental philosophy

1913–1960

"A man's work is nothing but this slow trek to rediscover, through the detours of art, those two or three great and simple images in whose presence his heart first opened."

"Hume Society: An international scholarly society."

"Follow the seasons of Ha,Ride in the state carriage of Yau,Wear the ceremonial cap of Chan,Let the music be the Shiu with its pantomimes."

"“New friends, however, will not be the same.” No, nor will you yourself remain the same; you change with every day and every hour."

156 quotes

🇺🇸Henry David Thoreau

Literature

Western philosophy

1817–1862

"The cost of a thing is the amount of what I will call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run."

"And Beasts that have Deliberation, must necessarily also have Will."

"No one entrusts a secret to a drunken man; but one will entrust a secret to a good man; therefore, the good man will not get drunk."

"Today, criminal justice functions and justifies itself only by this perpetual reference to something other than itself, by this unceasing reinscription in non-juridical systems."

"When the profits of trade happen to be greater than ordinary, over-trading becomes a general error both among great and small dealers."

"To ignore the true God is in fact only half an evil; atheism is worth more than the piety bestowed on mythical gods."

"To be a person, a being must be self-conscious, aware of its identity and its continued existence over time."

"Fairness means not to use fraud and trickery in the exchange of commodities and services and the exchange of feelings."

"The men of the future will yet fight their way to many a liberty that we do not even miss."

"It is easy for us to criticize the prejudices of our grandfathers, from which our fathers freed themselves. It is more difficult to search for prejudices among the beliefs and values that we hold."

"The full expression of personality depends upon its being inflated by social prestige; it is a social privilege."

"The core of the concept of a bribe is an inducement improperly influencing the performance of a public function meant to be gratuitously exercised."

"Theological writing always transgresses itself, just as theological speech feeds on the silence in which, at last, it speaks correctly."

"A theology of interruption demands we attend to the interruption as if the interruption were the real, and the other stuff of our lives a distraction."

"The idea of obligation is rationally unstable without the accompanying idea of a sufficiently good and powerful obligator to give the command and sustain the order in which the command is observed."

"I do not think discursively. It is not so much that I arrive at truth as that I take my start from it."

26 quotes

Thomas Garrett

Ethics

"Friend, I haven't a dollar in the world; but if thee knows a fugitive who needs a breakfast send him to me."

"In sum, rather than being, in Guyer's dismissive phrase, "an anodyne recommendation of epistemological modesty," transcendental idealism, as here understood, is a bold, even revolutionary, theory of epistemic conditions."

"There is nothing that is going to make people hate you more, and love you more, than telling the truth."

11 quotes

Alphonsus Maria de' Liguori

Ethics

1696–1787

"At death all our hope of salvation will come from the testimony of our conscience as to whether or not we are dying resigned to God’s will."

"Our triumphs seem hollow unless we have friends to share them, and our failures are made bearable by their understanding."

7 quotes

🇨🇦Patricia Churchland

Philosophy

humanism

b. 1943

"InConversation Radio Interview with Robyn Williams"

"Prudence is … more than mere shrewdness. If not tied down to the noble and just ends that one has been habituated to love, the soul's native power of cleverness can lead to the utmost knavery."

"Hauerwas Reading Room Online Resources on and by Stanley Hauerwas. Maintained by Arnold Neufeldt-Fast, PhD, Tyndale Seminary"

"Whoever criticizes others must have something to replace them. Criticism without suggestion is like trying to stop flood with flood and put out fire with fire. It will surely be without worth."

"I would never have become an animal rights advocate if I had not first been a human rights advocate, especially for those humans who lack the understanding or power to assert their rights for themselves."

"Man was created for the sole purpose of rejoicing in God and deriving pleasure from the splendor of His Presence; for this is true joy and the greatest pleasure that can be found."

14 quotes