Jacob Bronowski Quotes

A moral choice in its basic terms appears to be a choice that favors survival: a choice made in favor of life.

I think in general the ends do not justify the means.

You can't slice up morals.

If you had to pick between being moral and successful, obviously I'd choose to be moral. However if you can choose both, will you choose both? I'd say definitely.

Morality has nothing in common with politics.

If I have to choose between peace and righteousness, I'll choose righteousness.

Ethics is inescapable.

When your principles seem to be demanding suicide, clearly it's time to check your premises

Economics and ethics have little in common.

Most people don't have any association in their minds with what they do and with ethics. They think they somehow moved past the questions of morality or values or ethics, and that's something that I've never imagined to be true.

It's more important to do the right thing than to do things right.

Conscience is better served by a myth.

The lessons this life has planted in my heart pertain more to caring than crops, more to Golden Rule than gold, more to the proper choice than to the popular choice.

As far as the stars are from the earth, and as different as fire is from water, so much do self-interest and integrity differ.

It can never be necessary to do what is not honourable.

Integrity is hard work. I do think the internet makes it harder because of the temptations of performance. You can perform and have integrity, but it's easier just to perform. So the temptations of social media lead to some dissonance.

It is better to will the good than to know the truth.

If you are picking the lesser of two evils, you are still picking Evil.

One’s concern with the ethics of means and ends varies inversely with one’s personal interest in the issue.

The balancing of present wants against the future is really the central problem of ethics.

Morality is truth in full bloom.

You know, there's a right and wrong way to do everything.

Whenever there is a conflict between universal principles and self-interest, self-interest is likely to prevail.

If you ask anyone, what is morality based on? These are the two factors that always come out: One is reciprocity, … a sense of fairness, and the other one is empathy and compassion.

If I have taken the word, by any reason, it has been because I think it is grave to kill men, under the pretext that they are mistaken on the interpretation of some point, for we know that even the chosen ones are not exempt from sometimes being wrong.