Raymond Carver Quotes

I consider myself a fairly ethical individual while I do have a lot of dichotomies within me. We're all victims of our own hypocrisy at times.

Ethical is 'I'll wait and do what's right even in the hardest times and even if I have to give up gains to do it.'

Everybody is grappling with their own moral compass, and that needle, like any needle, can't just stick. It's always floating a little bit, and depending on where you're standing, it's hard to read.

Guilt agonizes over trifles, ignores habitual wrongdoing.

I'm a good person. In most ways. But I'm beginning to think that being a good person in most ways doesn't count for anything very much, if you're a bad person in one way.

Conscience is a just but weak judge. Weakness leaves it powerless to execute its judgment.

I know what we do is right but right doesn't always mean easy.

Most men only commit great crimes because of their scruples about petty ones.

In day-to-day life, you have stimulus to behave unethically, but in the long term, it always pays off to be ethical.

Is there one specific source that determines correct morality and everybody should follow that? Or should individuals come up with following that source or not depending on their situation?

I don't think any of us know how we would react until we were put in a situation where we have to do something bad or do something good. I think I'd like to believe I'd act like a decent human being, but I'm realistic to know I don't know.

Ethics are not necessarily to do with being law-abiding. I am very interested in the moral path, doing the right thing.

Action indeed is the sole medium of expression for ethics.

It's easy to get into the grey zone [of ethics].

I have learned that a clear conscience, or a legal opinion, does not make you ethically bullet proof.

You can have a value system and be unable to totally live it.

As I heard out people who had done others wrong, I'd often wonder how a human allows his or her better judgement to override their conscience. When I share these feelings with my friends, they say, 'Everyone isn't like you.' But I think it's easy to assert your better feelings and not allow the darker side to dominate your personality.

When honor and the Law no longer stand on the same side of the line, how do we choose[?]

Conscience gets a lot of credit that really belongs to cowardice.

If it comes down to your ethics vs. a job, choose ethics. You can always find another job.

Give up money, give up fame, give up science, give the earth itself and all it contains, rather than do an immoral act.

An injurious truth has no merit over an injurious lie. Neither should ever be uttered. The man who speaks an injurious truth, lest his soul be not saved if he do otherwise, should reflect that that sort of a soul is not strictly worth saving.

...guilt leads to righteous action, but rarely is it the right action.

I marveled at them both; how difficult it must be to be a person. To constantly subvert your desires. To worry about doing the right thing, rather than doing what is most expedient. At that moment, honestly, I had grave doubts as to my ability to interact on such a level. I wondered if I could ever become the human I hoped to be.

Who would not rather be the sufferer than the defrauder?