Nicholas M. Butler Quotes

It is difficult for me to regard anyone who obeys no moral principle in his conduct to be a religious man.

As long as the decent people refuse to believe that morality must manifest itself in every sphere of human activity, including the political, they will not meet the challenge of Marxism.

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

...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.

I do not believe the United States is well served by a policy that says it is OK to be immoral in any way.

Action indeed is the sole medium of expression for ethics.

We've lost our sense of ethics; we live in a world of small-mindedness, of gratification without happiness and actions without meaning.

The whole history of man is continuous proof of the maxim that to divest one's methods of ethical concepts means to sink into the depths of utter demoralization.

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.

There can be no question of holding forth on ethics. I have seen people behave badly with great morality and I note every day that integrity has no need of rules

Oh, I hate the cheap severity of abstract ethics!

A corrupt practice may be abolished, but a soiled imagination is not easily cleansed.

Plunder is morally wrong. It ruins your credibility.

Without integrity and conscience we lose our freedom.

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.

It’s pretty simple, the ethical life. It’s just demanding.

A person may be qualified to do greater good to mankind and become more beneficial to the world, by morality without faith than by faith without morality.

And that whole do-able/undo-able thing? Yeah. Need I point out that neither Ruth nor I have ever "done" anybody in our lives?

May your mind be thoroughly impressed with the absolute necessity of universal virtue and goodness, as the only sure road to happiness, and may you walk therein with undeviating steps.

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

I think that ethical behaviour is another feature of the kind of inner discipline that leads to a happier existence.

In all this world there is no substitute for personal integrity. It includes honor. It includes performance. It includes keeping one's word. It includes doing what is right regardless of the circumstances

Is it less dishonest to do what is wrong because it is not expressly prohibited by written law? Let us hope our moral principles are not yet in that stage of degeneracy.

Morality represents for everybody a thoroughly definite and ascertained idea: the idea of human conduct regulated in a certain manner.

That cannot be safe which is not honourable.