Abraham Lincoln Quotes

Really, no-one is bad except for serial killers and dictators.

Ethics is in origin the art of recommending to others the sacrifices required for cooperation with oneself.

If people are good only because they fear punishment, and hope for reward, then we are a sorry lot indeed.

Know the difference between principles based on right or wrong vs. principles based on personal gain, and consider the basis of your own principles.

That's a central part of philosophy, of ethics. What do I owe to strangers? What do I owe to my family? What is it to live a good life? Those are questions which we face as individuals.

I think the first duty of society is justice.

I was raised to understand and know the difference between right and wrong.

I am not in this business as a calling. I don't do what I do to right any wrongs.

I have not observed men's honesty to increase with their riches.

It’s clear that cracking the genetic code would be of significantly less benefit if we allow our moral code to become cracked as well.

The great political questions are in their final analysis great moral questions.

What are the values that give meaning? What is the line that you will never cross, because on this side you're good, and on this side you're evil.

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.

Man is naturally self-centered and he is inclined to regard expediency as the supreme standard for what is right and wrong. However, we must not convert an inclination into an axiom that just as man's perceptions cannot operate outside time and space, so his motivations cannot operate outside expediency; that man can never transcend his own self. The most fatal trap into which thinking may fall is the equation of existence and expediency.

Morality is either a social contract or you have to pay cash.

Altruism is a hard master, but so is opportunism.

We talk so much about one's rights... so little about what is actually right.

We are all ready to be savage in some cause. The difference between a good man and a bad one is the choice of the cause.

There are two freedoms - the false, where a man is free to do what he likes; the true, where he is free to do what he ought.

The wretched have no compassion, they can do good only from strong principles of duty.

I'm very interested in good and evil and the moral natures of people.

Profit per se is not my motive.

So always, if we look back, concern for face-to-face morality, and its modern emphasis on justice as well, have historically evolved as religious issues.

Modern morality is all about perception.

There is a moral dimension, for me, in anything that's any good.