ethics

"Mrs Touchett was certainly a person of many oddities, of which her behaviour on returning to her husband's house after many months was a noticeable specimen. She had her own way of doing all that she …"

"My huge monument to the bombing of Rotterdam , for instance, was the third and final version of this figure. Once the model had been accepted in principle and the scale agreed on, I began working on a…"

"As a source of objective morality, the Bible is one of the worst books we have. It might be the very worst, in fact—if we didn't also happen to have the Qur'an."

"Because conduct judged improper or illegal in one culture may be considered quite proper—even unavoidable—in other cultures, we have been chary of making moral judgments. Thus, we have sought to avoid…"

"To live each day as though one's last, never flustered, never apathetic, never attitudinizing – here is perfection of character."

"Ethics requires the kind of personal reflection, in the end, that no one else can do decisively for any individual."

"Virtue is defined to be mediocrity, of which either extreme is vice."

"If swindling pays, then it will not stop. The definition of the good society is one in which virtue pays. I can now add a slight variation on this; you cannot have a good society unless virtue pays. B…"

"The most imposing characteristic of the Mississipian is the pyramidal mound, built not to cover a burial but as a foundation for a temple or a chief's house."

"“The good news is that at the essence of who and what we are there is a deep and fundamental goodness. Not the goodness that we've been taught, not like morally good, as opposed to morally bad, but so…"

"Much of what we do as adults is based on this imitative absorption during our childhood years. Frequently we imagine that we are behaving in a particular way because such behaviour accords with some a…"

"Character is formed from the repeated choice of thoughts and action. Make the right choice - You shall have a firm and noble character."

"Human intuitions are systematically biased. Evolutionary psychology explains how our moral intuitions and the rationalisations they spawn have been shaped by millennia of natural selection to maximise…"

"I say that the strongest principle of growth lies in human choice."

"We are constantly railing against the passions; we ascribe to them all of man’s afflictions, and we forget that they are also the source of all his pleasures … But what provokes me is that only their …"

"I'm John Kerry and I'm reporting for duty."

"Neither the right of self-determination nor the principle of territorial integrity is absolute."

"The Diary of a Madman is in a sense the key to Tolstoy's work. If it had not been written by Tolstoy himself, we should certainly have looked upon it as a calumny, since we are accustomed to look upon…"

"The notion of nothingness is not characteristic of laboring humanity: those who toil have neither time nor inclination to weigh their dust; they resign themselves to the difficulties or the doltishnes…"

"Be more concerned with your character than your reputation. For your character is what you really are, while your reputation is merely what others think you are."