Lawrence Pearsall Jacks Quotes

At the descriptive level, certainly, you would expect different cultures to develop different sorts of ethics and obviously they have; that doesn't mean that you can't think of overarching ethical principles you would want people to follow in all kinds of places.

Corporate bodies are more corrupt and profligate than individuals, because they have more power to do mischief, and are less amenable to disgrace or punishment. They feel neither shame, remorse, gratitude, nor goodwill.

We can only judge what is right and proper by our own standards of right and wrong, which differs widely from the whites if I have been properly informed. The whites may do wrong all their lives, and then if they are sorry for it when they die, all is well, but with us it is different. We must continue to do good throughout our lives ... If the Great Spirit wished us to believe and do as the whites, He could easily change our opinions so that we could see, think, and act as they do... I believe that every man must make his own path.

Whereas religions may serve a benign purpose by letting many people feel comfortable with the level of morality they themselves can attain, no religion holds its members to the high standards of moral responsibility that the secular world of science and medicine does!

Education will never be raised to a level adequate to the demands of the present form of civilization--it is woefully inadequate now--till international ethical action raises it.

The highest virtue here may be least in another world.

We need to be clear when we venerate entrepreneurs what we are venerating. They are not moral leaders. If they were moral leaders, they wouldn't be great businessmen.

It would be foolhardy to count on the conscience of the world.

The modern period adds social ethics to religions agenda, for we now realize that social structures are not like laws of nature. They are human creations, so we are responsible for them.

I have an ethics background. It doesn't mean you're perfect. But I tried to set an entirely different bar for politics in D.C. that's based on ethics and first principles and political philosophy, and not this constant bickering of, 'Are you Right or Left?'

If you deny that any principles of conduct at all are common to and admitted by all men who try to behave reasonably - well, I don't see how you can have any ethics or any ethical background for law.

Right action tends to be defined in terms of general individual rights and standards that have been critically examined and agreed upon by the whole society.

Relativism should be confronted where it damages fundamental human rights, because we're not relativists if we believe that the human being should be at the centre of society and the rights of every human being should be respected.

Ethics is a fluid term ...It's the standards by which a civilized society lives.

No time can be more vainely spent, then that which is consumed in unlawfull games, besides the breeding of much contention and quarrelles:…. no private Souldiour or inferiour Officer shall play at Dice and Cards, nor any other unlawfull games, upon paine of two dayes imprisonment for the first time, and for after committing the like, to bee further punished by the judges discretion.

Conventionality is not morality. Self-righteousness is not religion. To attack the first is not to assail the last.

Laws are often made to express collective ethical principles, to establish a climate of opinion …

Opinions upon moral questions are more often the expression of strongly felt expediency than of careful ethical reasoning

Our preachers talk glibly of "introducing the Christian spirit into international relations. Do they realize what that involves? Do they realize that the introduction of the Christian spirit into international relations is impossible without the willingness of all nations to sacrifice their national interests for the sake of international interests of greater importance? …. Are they prepared to go to their government with that demand, or to fight the next election on that basis? If not, let them talk no more of introducing the Christian spirit into international relations.

Any allegiance to a deity or concept or universal principal which put obedience above decent behavior toward an innocent human being evil.

We should challenge the relativism that tells us there is no right or wrong, when every instinct of our mind knows it is not so, and is a mere excuse to allow us to indulge in what we believe we can get away with. A world without values quickly becomes a world without value.

Real morality is possible when the sanctions for morality are also tangible and real. Therefore, atheism shifts the basis of morality from faith in god to obligations of social living. Moral conduct is not a passport to heaven; it is social necessity.

Liberty and responsibility are inseparable.

Morality, then, is not a set of arbitrary regulations dictated by a vengeful deity and written down in a book; nor is it the custom of a particular culture or tribe. It is a consequence of the interchangeability of perspectives and the opportunity the world provides for positive-sum games.

No man of honor, as the word is usually understood, did ever pretend that his honor obliged him to be chaste or temperate, to pay his creditors, to be useful to his country, to do good to mankind, to endeavor to be wise or learned, to regard his word, his promise, or his oath.