Robert Louis Stevenson Quotes

I'm not any more moral than my neighbors.

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

I'm curious how people build up the codes that they live their life by, and how they come to think that that's the best way for them to function.

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.

Spirituality is something that makes you who you are on and off the field. It's something you try and live by. The way you play is one thing, but the way you act is a little different. You're just trying to be a good person, the best you can be, on and off the field.

I didn't grow up with any concept of people being deviants unless they mistreated others.

Ethical and legal are not synonyms. ;

Society doesn't have values. People have values.

I'm a nice middle-class girl.

I would not allow CIA to undertake activity that is immoral, even if it is technically legal.

I just want to be a good man.

The vehemence of my moral indignation surprised me. Was I beginning to have standards and principles, and, oh dear, scruples? What were they, and what would I do with them, and how much were they going to get in my way?

When we talk about values, I think of rationality in solving problems. That's something I value. Fairness, kindness, generosity, tolerance. That's different. When they [Conservative right wing Republicans] talk about values, they're talking about things like going to church, voting for Bush, being loyal to Jesus, praying. These are not values.

To claim that theft or adultery or lying are "evil" simply reflects our degraded idea of good-—that it has something to do with respect for property, respectability, and sincerity.

You cannot lecture another people about what you think is right or wrong based on your value system unless you're willing to accept others imposing their value system on you.

I don't think I was very structured in that society and I don't really believe in personal success, which most Americans believe in.

I think "immoral" is probably the wrong word to use...I prefer the word "unethical."

Perhaps what you call conventionality, I call decency.

I think people should think a million times before they give birth. The guilts of motherhood were the worst guilts in the world for me. They were really insurmountable. You see, you are depriving another human being of so many things, and the other party also knows it.

… you were so worried about legal and illegal that you never stopped to think about whether it was right or wrong.

Most people don't have any association in their minds with what they do and with ethics. They think they somehow moved past the questions of morality or values or ethics, and that's something that I've never imagined to be true.

"What is normal?" really becomes the question. What is normal, and how are we fooled into thinking it's something other than what we're doing at any given time. Every family has either a drug addict or an alcoholic or some sort of dysfunction that the family is dealing with. And I think the grace of this family is that they actually could be that far out there but also be forgiving, and be really human, and be human in front of each other without much shame.

Civilization means conforming to a standard of behavior that may not seem natural to us.

I wouldn't be a part of anything that had acts of violence toward children. I don't think I would do a horror film, either. That just doesn't sit well on my soul.

These prin­ciples laid down as in variable rules: that one must pay a card sharper, but need not pay a tailor; that one must never tell a lie to a man, but one may to a woman; that one must never cheat any one, but one may a husband; that one must never pardon an insult, but one may give one and so on. These principles were possibly not reasonable and not good, but they were of unfailing certainty, and so long as he adhered to them, Vronsky felt that his heart was at peace and he could hold his head up.