Sherwin B. Nuland Quotes

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

At the end of the day, if there are truly ethical considerations, those have to override scientific considerations.

It may not have the virtuous ring of the golden rule, but the maxim 'never say never' is one of the most important in ethics.

Now here is a departure from the first principle of true ethics. Here we find ideas of moral wrong and moral right associated with something else than beneficial action. The consequent is, we lose sight of the real basis of morals, and substitute a false one.

Morality is a social necessity

The very essence of our civilization is that we give a paramount place to morality in all our affairs, public or private.

Morality must relate, at some level, to the well-being of conscious creatures. If there are more and less effective ways for us to seek happiness and to avoid misery in this world - and there clearly are - then there are right and wrong answers to questions of morality.

Call me old-fashioned, but I believe that morality is not just a matter of opinion.

I don't want to do anything that violates my own personal code of ethics and morals.

She belongs to a race of delightful women, who never do any harm, whom everybody calls good, and who are very severe on those who do not pretend to be good.

There is no system that is inherently moral if the participants themselves are not.

It didn't occur to me to go into something that didn't have an ethical return for me.

Morality is the herd-instinct in the individual.

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

I try not to do anything that's immoral.

Some things must be good in themselves, else there could be no measure whereby to lay out good and evil.

The ethic of conviction and the ethic of responsibility are not opposites. They are complementary to one another.

The fundamental basis of ethics must be chosen in some non-scientific way.

One needs to know what is right and what is wrong.

Morality is the thing upon which your friends smile, and immorality is the thing upon which they frown

The great difficulty about keeping the Ten Commandments is that no man can keep them and be a gentleman.

The rules of morality are not the conclusion of our reason.

Morality is a private and costly luxury.

In just about every area of society, there's nothing more important than ethics.

Right and wrong are not simply matters of evolutionary impacts and what is natural.