Charles Darwin Quotes

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

Ethical is 'I'll wait and do what's right even in the hardest times and even if I have to give up gains to do it.'

The Catholic tradition maintains that the objective norms governing right action are accessible to reason, prescinding from the content of revelation.

Reasonable ideas which find their sanction in the conscience of the righteous do not die; they are consequently realities and active forces, but they are so only to the extent that those who profess them know how to turn them to account.

A man does what he must - in spite of personal consequences, in spite of obstacles and dangers and pressures - and that is the basis of all human morality.

We will not, on the altar of money, mortgage our conscience, mortgage our faith, mortgage our salvation.

What matters is that you are doing what you think is right based on the standards which you hold.

The Natural Law which God has written into our beings cannot be entirely eradicated, but it can be gravely deformed, leading to distortion of consciousness and conscience, and hence our actions.

When law and morality contradict each other, the citizen has the cruel alternative of either losing his moral sense or losing his respect for the law.

I have learned that a clear conscience, or a legal opinion, does not make you ethically bullet proof.

For half a century past, the African slave-trade began to awaken a spirit of remorse and sympathy in the breasts of men, and a conviction that the traffic was repugnant to the principles of Christian duty, and the maxims of justice and humanity

I know in war good people can feel obliged for good reasons to do things they would normally object to and recoil from.

The impulse which directs to right conduct, and deters from crime, is not only older than the ages of nations and cities, but coeval with that Divine Being who sees and rules both heaven and earth.

Duty is a better guide than stars or statutes.

The feeling of right or wrong is the beginning of wisdom.

Virtue is despotic; life, reputation, every earthly good, must be surrendered at her voice. The law may seem hard, but it is the guardian of what it commands; and is the only sure defence of happiness.

Men must learn now with pity to dispense; For policy sits above conscience.

Man was destined for society. His morality therefore was to be formed to this object. He was endowed with a sense of right and wrong merely relative to this. This sense is as much a part of his nature as the sense of hearing, seeing, feeling; it is the true foundation of morality... The moral sense, or conscience, is as much a part of man as his leg or arm. It is given to all human beings in a stronger or weaker degree, as force of members is given them in a greater or less degree. It may be strengthened by exercise, as may any particular limb of the body.

Besides the five senses, there is a sixth sense, of equal importance--the sense of duty.

The idea of duty--that recognition of something to be lived for beyond the mere satisfaction of self--is to the moral life what the addition of a great central ganglion is to animal life.

Conscience is doubtless sufficient to conduct the coldest character into the road of virtue; but enthusiasm is to conscience what honor is to duty; there is in us a superfluity of soul, which it is sweet to consecrate to the beautiful when the good has been accomplished.

The moral sense, or conscience, is as much part of a man as his leg or arm. It is given to all in a stronger or weaker degree.. It may be strengthened by exercise.

Even when there is no law, there is conscience.

The following proposition seems to me in a high degree probable—namely, that any animal whatever, endowed with well-marked social instincts, the parental and filial affections being here included, would inevitably acquire a moral sense or conscience, as soon as its intellectual powers had become as well, or nearly as well developed, as in man. For, firstly, the social instincts lead an animal to take pleasure in the society of its fellows, to feel a certain amount of sympathy with them, and to perform various services for them.

I think that the only ultimate guide we have is our conscience, and if the law of the land goes against our conscience I think we should disobey the law.