Never do anything against conscience even if the state demands it.

Cruelty is, perhaps, the worst kid of sin. Intellectual cruelty is certainly the worst kind of cruelty.

A man without ethics is a wild beast loosed upon this world.

When will our consciences grow so tender that we will act to prevent human misery rather than avenge it?

The ‚morality of compromise‘ sounds contradictory. Compromise is usually a sign of weakness, or an admission of defeat. Strong men don’t compromise, it is said, and principles should never be compromised.

There is the good and the bad, the great and the low, the just and the unjust. I swear to you that all that will never change.

Art, like morality, consists in drawing the line somewhere.

The word ‚good‘ has many meanings. For example, if a man were to shoot his grandmother at a range of five hundred yards, I should call him a good shot, but not necessarily a good man.

The humanists‘ replacement for religion: work really hard and somehow you’ll either save yourself or you’ll be immortal. Of course, that’s a total joke, and our progress is nothing. There may be progress in technology but there’s no ethical progress whatsoever.

States are not moral agents.

Integrity without knowledge is weak and useless, and knowledge without integrity is dangerous and dreadful.

Whoever has witnessed another’s ideal becomes his inexorable judge and as it were his evil conscience.

Of two evils, choose neither.

Fear is the mother of morality.

Virtue is relative to the actions and ages of each of us in all that we do.

States are not moral agents, people are, and can impose moral standards on powerful institutions.

It’s that wonderful old-fashioned idea that others come first and you come second. This was the whole ethic by which I was brought up. Others matter more than you do, so ‚don’t fuss, dear; get on with it.‘

Faced with what is right, to leave it undone shows a lack of courage.

Rather leave the crime of the guilty unpunished than condemn the innocent.

No public man can be just a little crooked.

If you’re not going to be rewarded for your virtues, and instead you’re going to be punished for them, then what’s your motivation to continue?

Do not be too moral. You may cheat yourself out of much life so.

I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for law.

How shall I lose the sin, yet keep the sense, and love the offender, yet detest the offence?

Character is always known. Thefts never enrich; alms never impoverish; murder will speak out of stone walls.

There is nothing more dangerous than the conscience of a bigot.

The time has come for all evangelists to practice full financial disclosure. The world is watching how we walk and how we talk. We must have the highest standards of morality, ethics and integrity if we are to continue to have influence.

Without a moral framework, there is nothing left but immediate self-indulgence by some and the path of least resistance by others. Neither can sustain a free society.

I think where political issues invade moral situations, spiritual leaders have to speak out.

The most practical kind of politics is the politics of decency.

It is perfectly possible to live a very moral life without a belief in God, and I think it’s perfectly possible to live a life peppered with ill-doing and believe in God.

What you do not want done to yourself, do not do to others.

Every man must decide whether he will walk in the light of creative altruism or in the darkness of destructive selfishness.

One must not cheat anyone, not even the world of its victory.

Morality is of the highest importance – but for us, not for God.

God made and governs the world invisibly, and has commanded us to love and worship him and no other God; to honor our parents and masters, and love our neighbours as ourselves; and to be temperate, just, and peaceable, and to be merciful even to brute beasts.

You say it is the good cause that hallows even war? I say unto you: it is the good war that hallows any cause.

Without feelings of respect, what is there to distinguish men from beasts?

I worked in ad sales. I would call up local businesses and try to get them to buy ads in the paper. The whole time, I felt like I was just scamming people.

I know of nothing more despicable and pathetic than a man who devotes all the hours of the waking day to the making of money for money’s sake.

For my own part, I wish the bald eagle had not been chosen the representative of our country. He is a bird of bad moral character. He does not get his living honestly.

The story being told in ‚Star Wars‘ is a classic one. Every few hundred years, the story is retold because we have a tendency to do the same things over and over again. Power corrupts, and when you’re in charge, you start doing things that you think are right, but they’re actually not.

Idealism is the noble toga that political gentlemen drape over their will to power.

Success consecrates the most offensive crimes.

Even today we raise our hand against our brother… We have perfected our weapons, our conscience has fallen asleep, and we have sharpened our ideas to justify ourselves as if it were normal we continue to sow destruction, pain, death. Violence and war lead only to death.

If you must break the law, do it to seize power: in all other cases observe it.

Justice is truth in action.

Don’t lie about anything, ever. Lying leads to Hell.

The first step in the evolution of ethics is a sense of solidarity with other human beings.

Abortion is clearly wrong.

Who shall decide when doctors disagree, And soundest casuists doubt, like you and me?

Humanitarianism consists in never sacrificing a human being to a purpose.

I do not believe in immortality of the individual, and I consider ethics to be an exclusively human concern with no superhuman authority behind it.

Honesty is for the most part less profitable than dishonesty.

Live your life as though your every act were to become a universal law.

Those who forget good and evil and seek only to know the facts are more likely to achieve good than those who view the world through the distorting medium of their own desires.

There’s no difference between one’s killing and making decisions that will send others to kill. It’s exactly the same thing, or even worse.

A strong argument for the religion of Christ is this – that offences against Charity are about the only ones which men on their death-beds can be made – not to understand – but to feel – as crime.

Morality arose largely as an empirical defence of the individual and society. Ever since intelligent beings began to be in contact, and consequently in friction, they have felt the need to guard themselves against each other’s encroachments.

Conscience is a man’s compass.

He who steals a little steals with the same wish as he who steals much, but with less power.