Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes

Action indeed is the sole medium of expression for ethics.

An action is the perfection and publication of thought. A right action seems to fill the eye, and to be related to all nature.

Because it's possible to do, and you have the right to do it, doesn't mean it's the right thing to do.

The right to do something doesn't mean it's the right thing to do.

You are wrong, sir, if you think that a man who is any good at all should take into account the risk of life or death; he should look to this only in his actions, whether what he does is right or wrong, whether he is acting like a good or a bad man.

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

The right to do something does not mean that doing it is right.

Ethics are not necessarily to do with being law-abiding. I am very interested in the moral path, doing the right thing.

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

Kant taught us that we should follow just those rules of conduct that we would want everybody to follow. Few find this generalization of The Golden Rule a great help.

A man who is good for anything ought not to calculate the chance of living or dying; he ought only to consider whether in doing anything he is doing right or wrong - acting the part of a good man or of a bad.

My only fear is doing something contrary to human nature - the wrong thing, the wrong way, or at the wrong time.

There is no wrong time to do the right thing.

The intellect has only one failing, which, to be sure, is a very considerable one. It has no conscience.

It’s a good thing when you don’t dare do something if you don’t think it’s right. But it’s not good when you think something’s not right because you don’t dare do it.

There's right and there's wrong. You got to do one or the other. You do the one and you're living. You do the other and you may be walking around, but you're dead as a beaver hat.

...guilt leads to righteous action, but rarely is it the right action.

Every act of every man is a moral act, to be tested by moral, and not by economic criteria.

He who would govern his actions by the laws of virtue must regulate his thoughts by those of reason.

Two wrongs don't make a right.

A fool is a person who knows the difference between right and wrong, and chooses to do wrong.

Justice consists not in being neutral between right and wrong, but finding out the right and upholding it, wherever found, against the wrong.

Dangerous acts can be done safely in a community which thinks and feels rightly, which would be the way to hell if they were executed by those who think and feel wrongly.

Intention, good or bad, is not enough.

Subordination to morality can be slavish or vain or self- interested or resigned or gloomily enthusiastic or thoughtless or an act of despair, just as subordination to a prince can be: in itself it is nothing moral.