Charlotte Perkins Gilman Quotes

The problem, of course, was that people did not seem to understand the difference between right and wrong. They needed to be reminded about this, because if you left it to them to work out for themselves, they would never bother. They would just find out what was best for them, and then they would call that the right thing. That's how most people thought.

As to ethics, unfortunately, we are still at sea. We never did have any popular base for what little ethics we knew, except the religious theories, and now that our faith is shaken in those theories we cannot account for ethics at all. It is no wonder we behave badly, we are literally ignorant of the laws of ethics, which is the simplest of sciences, the most necessary, the most continuously needed. The childish misconduct of our 'revolted youth' is quite equaled by that of older people, and neither young nor old seem to have any understanding of the reasons why conduct is 'good' or 'bad.

The characteristic feature of all ethics is to consider human life as a game that can be won or lost and to teach man the means of winning.

It's better to die doing good than to live doing evil.

There are people who think that honesty is always the best policy. This is a superstition. There are times when the appearance of it is worth six of it.

An action is the perfection and publication of thought. A right action seems to fill the eye, and to be related to all nature.

As our own species is in the process of proving, one cannot have superior science and inferior morals. The combination is unstable and self-destroying.

It's immoral to steal, but you can take things.

In ethics, prudence is not an important virtue, but in the world it is almost everything.

An education which does not teach us to discriminate between good and bad, to assimilate the one and eschew the other, is a misnomer

Morality is the Science of harmonious relations between intelligent beings.

Moralism doesn't produce morality; it produces immorality.

The first idea that the child must acquire, in order to be actively disciplined, is that of the difference between good and evil.

An educated person must learn to act justly, beginning, first of all, with his thoughts, then later in his deeds. That is what it means to be educated.

The end does not justify the means. No one's rights can be secured by the violation of the rights of others.

One of the hardest things to teach a child is that truth is more important than consequences.

Ethics, as has been well said, are the finest fruits of humanity, but they are not its roots

One of the first things a family tries to teach its children is the difference between good and evil, right and wrong. One of the first things our schools do is destroy that distinction.

...virtue is not merely a state in conformity with the right principle, but one that implies the right principle; and the right principle in moral conduct is prudence.

The most important human endeavor is the striving for morality in our actions.

If one is not virtuous he becomes vicious.

I conceive ethics as a branch of psychology.

Cease being intimidated by the argument that a right action is impossible because it does not yield maximum profits, or that a wrong action is to be condoned because it pays.

Since the branch of philosophy on which we are at present engaged differs from the others in not being a subject of merely intellectual interest — I mean we are not concerned to know what goodness essentially is, but how we are to become good men, for this alone gives the study its practical value — we must apply our minds to the solution of the problems of conduct.

It is not good for one's morals to see bad acting