Marcus Tullius Cicero Quotes

The great theatre for virtue is conscience.

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

All effective actions require the passport of morality.

The only obligation which I have a right to assume is to do at any time what I think right.

Conscience, that vicegerent of God in the human heart, whose "still small voice" the loudest revelry cannot drown.

A conscience is like a boat or a car. If you feel you need one, rent it.

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.

Behaving morally because of a hope of reward or a fear of punishment is not morality. Morality is not bribery or threats. Religion is bribery and threats. Humans have morality. We don't need religion.

Fear is the mother of morality.

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.'

In ethics, there is a humility; moralists are usually righteous.

Sin, also for those who don't have faith, exists when one goes against one's conscience. To listen to and obey it means, in fact, to decide in face of what is perceived as good or evil. And on this decision pivots the goodness or malice of our action.

If you do not know the laws of right conduct, you cannot form your character.

The imperative is to define what is right and do it.

In any ethical situation, the thing you want least to do is probably the right action.

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.

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.

It may not have the virtuous ring of the golden rule, but the maxim 'never say never' is one of the most important in ethics.

There is no right in acting.

In this life, it's not hard to do wrong.

Each of us has a vision of good and of evil. We have to encourage people to move towards what they think is good... Everyone has his own idea of good and evil and must choose to follow the good and fight evil as he conceives them. That would be enough to make the world a better place.

The voice of conscience is so delicate that it is easy to stifle it; but it is also so clear that it is impossible to mistake it.

There is no moral precept that does not have something inconvenient about it.

Morality is the herd-instinct in the individual.