Ethics & Morality


“There’s a hole in the moral ozone and it’s getting bigger.” — Michael Josephson, 20th/21st- century American ethicist

“Art, like morality, consists of drawing the line somewhere.” — G.K. Chesterton, 19th-century English essayist and poet

“That which is beautiful is moral. That is all, nothing more.” — Gustave Flaubert, 19th-century French novelist

“Morality is the best of all devices for leading mankind by the nose.” — Friedrich Nietzsche, 19th-century German philosopher

“Morality is simply the attitude we adopt toward people whom we personally dislike.” — Oscar Wilde, 19th-century English wit and author

“The first step in the evolution of ethics is a sense of solidarity with other human beings.” — Albert Schweitzer, 20th-century German Nobel Peace Prize-winning mission doctor and theologian

“In law a man is guilty when he violates the rights of others. In ethics he is guilty if he only thinks of doing so.” — Immanuel Kant, 18th-century Prussian geographer and philosopher

“The foundation of morality is to have done, once and for all, with lying.” — Thomas Henry Huxley, English biologist and essayist (1825-1895)

“Morality is stronger than tyrants.” — Saint-Just

“Morality, when formal, devours.” — Albert Camus, Nobel Prize-winning, 20th-century French “existentialist” novelist

“A moral being is one who is capable of comparing his past and future actions or motives, and of approving or disapproving of them.” — Charles Darwin

“Morality begins at the point of a gun.” — Mao Tse-Tung, 20th-century revolutionary founder of modern China

“Without civic morality communities perish; without personal morality their survival has no value.” — Bertrand Russell, 20th-century British mathematician and philosopher

“The essence of morality is the subjugation of nature in obedience of social needs.” — John Morley, 19th-century British statesman

“Ethics is a code of values which guide our choices and actions and determine the purpose and course of our lives.” — Ayn Rand, 20th-century Russian/American novelist and philosopher