“It is not at all surprising that the disciples imagined that the law had been abrogated, when Jesus made promises like this. For these promises reversed all popular notions of right and wrong, and pronounced a blessing on all that was accounted worthless.”
“If you don t have integrity, you have nothing. You can t buy it. You can have all the money in the world, but if you are not a moral and ethical person, you really have nothing.”
“When we perform at our highest level of potential, we are content. Because we have given I best in what we enjoy doing.”
“If you are not rising with ethics, you will sink with every rise!”
“Everything good is good because of the love it contains.”
“The answer can t be found in books - or be solved by bringing it to other people. Not unless you want to remain a child all your life. You ve got to find the answer inside you - feel the right thing to do. Charlie, you ve got to learn to trust yourself”
“The code-of-ethics playlist: o Treat your colleagues, family, and friends with respect, dignity, fairness, and courtesy. o Pride yourself in the diversity of your experience and know that you have a lot to offer. o Commit to creating and supporting a world that is free of discrimination, harassment, and retaliation. o Have balance in your life and help others to do the same. o Invest in yourself, achieve ongoing enhancement of your skills, and continually upgrade your abilities. o Be approachable, listen carefully, and look people directly in the eyes when speaking. o Be involved, know what is expected from you, and let others know what is expected from them. o Recognize and acknowledge achievement. o Celebrate, relive, and communicate your successes on an ongoing basis.”
“Bonhoeffer examined and dismissed a number of approaches to dealing with evil. Reasonable people, he said, think that with a little reason, they can pull back together a structure that has come apart at the joints. Then there are the ethical fanatics who believe that they can face the power of evil with the purity of their will and their principles. Men of conscience become overwhelmed because the countless respectable and seductive disguises and masks in which evil approaches them make their conscience anxious and unsure until they finally content themselves with an assuaged conscience instead of a good conscience. They must deceive their own conscience in order not to despair. Finally there are some who retreat to a private virtuousness. Such people neither steal, nor murder,nor commit adultery, but do good according to their abilities. but... they must close their eyes and ears to the injustice around them. Only at the cost of self-deception can they keep their private blamelessness clean from the stains of responsible action in the world. In all that they do, what they fail to do will not let them rest.”
“If you witness evil men committing evil deeds and do nothing, what does that make you?”
“No one is without Christianity, if we agree on what we mean by the word. It is every individual s individual code of behavior, by means of which he makes himself a better human being than his nature wants to be, if he followed his nature only. Whatever its symbol—cross or crescent or whatever—that symbol is man s reminder of his duty inside the human race. Its various allegories are the charts against which he measures himself and learns to know what he is. It cannot teach man to be good as the textbook teaches him mathematics. It shows him how to discover himself, evolve for himself a moral code and standard within his capacities and aspirations, by giving him a matchless example of suffering and sacrifice and the promise of hope.”
“Une éthique véritablement socialiste, c est-à-dire qui cherche la justice sans supprimer la liberté, qui impose aux individus des charges mais sans abolir l individualité, se trouvera fort embarrassée par les problèmes que pose la condition de la femme.”
“There are already plenty of people who will take a firm stand on the need to be competely impartial between right and wrong.”
“Evolution, energy, and ethics are the core elements that will guide us along the challenging path toward the Life Era: the first - evolution - because a good understanding of our universal roots and of our place in the cosmic scheme of things will help us create a feasible future course; the second - energy - because our fate will bear strongly on the ways that humankind learns to use energy efficiently and safely; and the third - ethics - because global citizenship and a planetary society are crucial factors in the survival of our species.”
“Would you agree, he said, that man s sole duty is to produce as much pleasure as possible? Only if the pleasure produced is equivalent to the diminution of pain. My father crossed his arms. And only if one man s pleasure is as important as any other s.”
“We have a choice. We have two options as human beings. We have a choice between conversation and war. That s it. Conversation and violence. And faith is a conversation stopper.”
“The great source of both the misery and disorders of human life, seems to arise from over-rating the difference between one permanent situation and another. Avarice over-rates the difference between poverty and riches: ambition, that between a private and a public station: vain-glory, that between obscurity and extensive reputation. The person under the influence of any of those extravagant passions, is not only miserable in his actual situation, but is often disposed to disturb the peace of society, in order to arrive at that which he so foolishly admires. The slightest observation, however, might satisfy him, that, in all the ordinary situations of human life, a well-disposed mind may be equally calm, equally cheerful, and equally contented. Some of those situations may, no doubt, deserve to be preferred to others: but none of them can deserve to be pursued with that passionate ardour which drives us to violate the rules either of prudence or of justice; or to corrupt the future tranquillity of our minds, either by shame from the remembrance of our own folly, or by remorse from the horror of our own injustice.”
“I suppose therefore that all things I see are illusions; I believe that nothing has ever existed of everything my lying memory tells me. I think I have no senses. I believe that body, shape, extension, motion, location are functions. What is there then that can be taken as true? Perhaps only this one thing, that nothing at all is certain.”