Ethics and Morality

Most of the greatest evils that man has inflicted upon man have come through people feeling quite certain about something which, in fact, was false.

A half-truth is the worst of all lies, because it can be defended in partiality.

I'm not smart enough to lie.

The liar's punishment is not in the least that he is not believed, but that he cannot believe anyone else.

The most common lie is that which one lies to himself; lying to others is relatively an exception.

People don't care how much you know until they know how much you care.

Knowledge is of no value unless you put it into practice.

I am a humanist, which means, in part, that I have tried to behave decently without expectations of rewards or punishments after I am dead.

Right is right even if no one is doing it; wrong is wrong even if everyone is doing it.

The assumption that animals are without rights and the illusion that our treatment of them has no moral significance is a positively outrageous example of Western crudity and barbarity. Universal compassion is the only guarantee of morality.

Most of the evil in this world is done by people with good intentions.

So far, about morals, I know only that what is moral is what you feel good after and what is immoral is what you feel bad after.

To educate a person in the mind but not in morals is to educate a menace to society.

Without freedom there can be no morality.

In a word, I was too cowardly to do what I knew to be right, as I had been too cowardly to avoid doing what I knew to be wrong.

The spread of evil is the symptom of a vacuum. Whenever evil wins, it is only by default: by the moral failure of those who evade the fact that there can be no compromise on basic principles.

Those who are easily shocked should be shocked more often.

The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who, in times of great moral crisis, maintain their neutrality.

If your morals make you dreary, depend on it, they are wrong.

Compassion is the basis of morality.

Do not be too moral. You may cheat yourself out of much life so. Aim above morality. Be not simply good, be good for something.

Scandal is gossip made tedious by morality.

Morality, like art, means drawing a line someplace.

The higher the buildings, the lower the morals.