Ethical Quotes

“Religion is an attempt to get control over the sensory world, in which we are placed, by means of the wish-world, which we have developed inside us as a result of biological and psychological necessities. But it cannot achieve its end. Its doctrines carry with them the stamp of the times in which they originated, the ignorant childhood days of the human race. Its consolations deserve no trust. Experience teaches us that the world is not a nursery. The ethical commands, to which religion seeks to lend its weight, require some other foundations instead, for human society cannot do without them, and it is dangerous to link up obedience to them with religious belief. If one attempts to assign to religion its place in man’s evolution, it seems not so much to be a lasting acquisition, as a parallel to the neurosis which the civilized individual must pass through on his way from childhood to maturity.”
― Sigmund Freud , Moses and Monotheism

“You have just dined, and however scrupulously the slaughterhouse is concealed in the graceful distance of miles, there is complicity.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Envy, after all, comes from wanting something that isn't yours. But grief comes from losing something you've already had.”
― Jodi Picoult, Perfect Match

“Not only is there often a right and wrong, but what goes around does come around, Karma exists, chickens do come home to roost, and as my mother, Phyllis, liked to say, “There is always a day of reckoning.” The good among the great understand that every choice we make adds to the strength or weakness of our spirits—ourselves, or to use an old fashioned word for the same idea, our souls. That is every human’s life work: to construct an identity bit by bit, to walk a path step by step, to live a life that is worthy of something higher, lighter, more fulfilling, and maybe even everlasting.”
― Donald Van de Mark, The Good Among the Great: 19 Traits of the Most Admirable, Creative, and Joyous People

“Life, it turns out, goes on. There is no cosmic rule that grants you immunity from the details just because you have come face-to-face with a catastrophe. The garbage can still overflow, the bills arrive in the mail, telemarketers, interrupt dinner.”
― Jodi Picoult, Perfect Match

“All sentient beings should have at least one right—the right not to be treated as property”
― GaryLFrancione

“Your life is a trajectory. Every choice you make alters that trajectory, in a positive or negative way. Will you categorize that dinner with friends as a business expense? Will you be honest with your daughter? Will you take more credit than you’re due? These are just the small questions that we face every day, and little by little, the answers influence the trajectory of our lives and beings.”
― Donald Van de Mark

“It’s pretty simple, the ethical life. It’s just demanding.”
― Terence McKenna

“In an earlier stage of our development most human groups held to a tribal ethic. Members of the tribe were protected, but people of other tribes could be robbed or killed as one pleased. Gradually the circle of protection expanded, but as recently as 150 years ago we did not include blacks. So African human beings could be captured, shipped to America, and sold. In Australia white settlers regarded Aborigines as a pest and hunted them down, much as kangaroos are hunted down today. Just as we have progressed beyond the blatantly racist ethic of the era of slavery and colonialism, so we must now progress beyond the speciesist ethic of the era of factory farming, of the use of animals as mere research tools, of whaling, seal hunting, kangaroo slaughter, and the destruction of wilderness. We must take the final step in expanding the circle of ethics. -”
― Peter Singer

“I believe that companies, as major employers, resource managers, technological innovators, and capital allocators, have a unique responsibility to operate with integrity, transparency, and accountability.”
― Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr., Board Room Blitz: Mastering the Art of Corporate Governance

“What if the one I choose to discount is one who has been truly hurt?”
― Jodi Picoult

“Ethically, she couldn't cause the suffering of any living thing. Logically, bacon cheeseburgers were delicious.”
― Thomm Quackenbush, We Shadows

“One of the main arguments that I make is that although almost everyone accepts that it is morally wrong to inflict “unnecessary” suffering and death on animals, 99% of the suffering and death that we inflict on animals can be justified only by our pleasure, amusement, or convenience. For example, the best justification that we have for killing the billions of nonhumans that we eat every year is that we enjoy the taste of animal flesh and animal products. This is not an acceptable justification if we take seriously, as we purport to, that it is wrong to inflict unnecessary suffering or death on animals, and it illustrates the confused thinking that I characterize as our “moral schizophrenia” when it comes to nonhumans.

A follow-up question that I often get is: “What about vivisection? Surely that use of animals is not merely for our pleasure, is it?”

Vivisection, Part One: The “Necessity” of Vivisection | Animal Rights: The Abolitionist Approach”
― GaryLFrancione

“Having to face him at a competency hearing is like getting to hell and finding out that the only food available is raw liver-insult added to injury.”
― Jodi Picoult, Perfect Match

“I want to make the choice that gives an accurate impression of who I am; and who I am is someone who wants to be ethical, evolved, yet not at all an oil pan for the machinations of the morally corrupt.”
― Kelli Jae Baeli, Immortality or Something Like It

“I think ethical ambivalence is a kind of innoculation, a way of excusing yourself in advance for something you actually want to do. No offense.”
― Jennifer Egan

“Ethical artificial intelligence is concerned with benefiting humanity, doing no harm to humanity, and respecting human values and preferences.”
― Sri Amit Ray, Ethical AI Systems: Frameworks, Principles, and Advanced Practices

“In ethical AI system frameworks, the systems, the creators, researchers, organizations, governments, and international agencies should always behave and update their own internal moral compass in the most advantageous way for humanity.”
― Sri Amit Ray, Ethical AI Systems: Frameworks, Principles, and Advanced Practices

“Ethical leadership in business sets the tone for a culture of integrity and accountability.”
― Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr.

“This much is certain: had I a daughter of an age where there could be any question of her being influenced by you, I would most assuredly warn her, the more so if she were also intellectually gifted. And if there were no reason to warn her against you, then I myself, who nevertheless imagine I might be your match, if not in suppleness then at least in firmness and constancy, if not in the variable and brilliant then at least in steadiness – then I myself, with a certain reluctance, sometimes actually feel that you are corrupting me, that I am letting myself be carried away by your exuberance, by the apparently good-natured wit with which you mock everything, that I am letting myself be borne away into this aesthetic-intellectual intoxication in which you live. In a way, then, I feel to some degree uncertain towards you, at times being too severe, at others too indulgent. However, that is not so strange, for you are the epitome of all possibility; so that one may see in you the possibility at one moment of your own ruin, at another of your own salvation. Every mood, every thought, good or evil, cheerful or sad, you pursue to its farthest limit, yet more in abstraction than concretely, so the pursuit is itself more like a mood from which nothing results except the knowledge of it, though not enough to make it more difficult or easy next time to abandon yourself to that same mood; for you keep it as a constant possibility. So it is almost as though you could be reproached for everything and nothing at all, because it is and yet is not attributable to you. You admit or don’t admit, according to circumstances, to having had such a mood. But you are not available for any charge. The important thing for you is that you have had the mood completely, with proper pathos.”
― Søren Kierkegaard, Either/Or: A Fragment of Life

“The business of saving souls had no ethics; every human relationship was shamelessly exploited. In essence, the tribe was asking us whether we shared its feelings; if we refused to join the church , it was equivalent to saying no, to placing ourselves in the position of moral monsters.”
― Richard Wright, Black Boy

“Everything was local, sustainable, and ethically sourced. There were only a dozen or so dishes on the menu, but each was mouthwatering. Sussex cider pork belly served with homemade applesauce, roasted parsnips, and caramelized onions. A salmon eggs Benedict with house-made English muffins and fresh local free-range eggs. Several vegetarian and vegan options with a South Asian flair. It all sounded delicious.”
― Rachel Linden, The Magic of Lemon Drop Pie

“The ritual and the ethical are two components of religion—and of Leviticus—that do not justify each other, but rather unite and produce mutual support. Indeed, it is instructive that Leviticus, a book that is so fundamentally concerned with distinction, does not make any explicit distinction between its ethical and its ritual laws. Sometimes they are mixed together, but they are never identified as two distinct categories of law.”
― Richard Elliott Friedman, Commentary on the Torah

“I am the line that I've drawn for myself.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Azad Earth Army: When The World Cries Blood

“As a manager making strategic choices, you ought to consider important moral principles and weigh potential ethical consequences or outcomes.”
― Johnson Craig

“With evolutionary power comes ethical duty.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Iftar-e Insaniyat: The First Supper

“Opting for timely and speedy technologies at the expense of cognitive intelligent human resource abilities is a tricky ethical dilemma in the Ideal-World which is proven to be the Ultimate-Reality.”
― Jonathan Tetteh-Cole

“In the darkest of times and places, a few people rescue Jews for what seems like no earthly reason. These tended to be people who in normal times might seem to take ethical and social norms a bit too literally, and whose fidelity to their expressed principles survived the end of the institutions that supported and defended them.
If these rescuers had anything in common beyond that, it was self-knowledge. When you know yourself there is little to say. This is worth brooding upon as we consider whow we, who know ourselves so poorly and have so much to say about ourselves, will respond to the challenges to come.”
― Timothy Snyder, Black Earth: The Holocaust as History and Warning

“As a Stoic humanist, humanism forms the foundation of my philosophy.
I believe in reason and science, in the strength of personal autonomy and responsibility, and in the transformative power of tolerance, harmony, kindness, and compassion.
To me, a meaningful and fulfilling life arises from continuous personal development, from nurturing creativity through art, music, and literature, and from living with unwavering ethical integrity.
In this harmony of mind, heart, and action, I seek to elevate my consciousness and contribute to a more peaceful and enlightened world.”
― Debasish Mridha M.D.

“As a Stoic humanist, I see life as a sacred opportunity to cultivate wisdom, compassion, and inner equilibrium. I trust in the guiding light of reason and the clarity of science, yet I also honor the boundless beauty of the human spirit. Personal autonomy and responsibility anchor my journey, reminding me that true freedom arises not from controlling the world but from mastering my own thoughts, emotions, and actions. Tolerance and harmony allow me to walk gently through life, while kindness and compassion elevate my existence beyond the self. Through creativity, art, music, literature, and the steady pursuit of ethical living, I strive to transform every moment into a meaningful act of presence. In this way, I seek not only to understand life but to illuminate it, with purpose, with dignity, and with love.”
― Debasish Mridha M.D.