David Brooks Quotes

Ethics is a fluid term ...It's the standards by which a civilized society lives.

We find the people to be no better than their laws.

If "Thou shalt not covet," and "Thou shalt not steal," were not commandments of Heaven, they must be made inviolable precepts in every society, before it can be civilized or made free.

Most people believe you have to have some moral absolutes if you want to hold back chaos.

Could she fall so low? No, there were limits, and she believed she still knew where some of them were.

The moment you give up your principles, and your values, you are dead, your culture is dead, your civilization is dead. Period.

Once you depart from the Ten Commandments as being the foundation of right and wrong, you are in a free fall.

At times, morality can be dismissed as a matter of personal conscience, no matter how widespread its acceptance. Ethics, on the other hand, arises from societal or group commitments to principia of behavior.

Without game, men prey on each other.

I have no point in my system or morals where I say, 'This is too far.'

Ethics are more important than laws.

The national policy would be laid in the pure and immutable principles of private morality

Civilization depends on morality.

Truth and trust are the means by which civilization holds off barbarism.

The Ten Commandments don't tell you what you ought to do: They only put ideas into your head.

All that makes existence valuable to any one depends on the enforcement of restraints upon the actions of other people.

There is nothing more personal than your values. What you will and won't do to get ahead, the lines you will and won't cross to win, whom you will and won't step on for personal gain, are at the very core of your code of honor. And your code of honor determines your character. And your character is who you are. Behind closed doors. When nobody is watching.

In the past, the respect people had for religion meant that ethical practice was maintained through a majority following one religion or another. But this is no longer the case. We must therefore find some other way of establishing basic ethical principles.

It is impossible to maintain freedom and order and justice without religious and moral sanctions.

Self-restraint is the very keystone of the ethics of vow-taking.

There can be no high civility without a deep morality, though it may not always call itself by that name.

I never condemn wrongdoing in any area.

Perhaps it's just me, but I am wary of any persons whose belief system is the only thing standing between them and repulsive behavior.

The relationship between the films and the individual Commandments [is] a tentative one. The films should be influenced by the individual Commandments to the same degree that the Commandments influence our daily lives.

The law is the witness and external deposit of our moral life. Its history is the history of the moral development of the race.