Ethical Challenges Quotes

A man who wishes to make a profession of goodness in everything must necessarily come to grief among so many who are not good. Therefore, it is necessary for a prince, who wishes to maintain himself, to learn how not to be good, and to use this knowledge and not use it according to the necessity of the case.

Any man who tries to be good all the time is bound to come to ruin among the great number who are not good.

I think it's extremely difficult consistently being a decent human being.

Virtue is persecuted by the wicked more than it is loved by the good.

For a good man fame is always a problem.

What shocked me, and what I wasn't prepared for, was just how brutal and how unethical some people can be in the NFL. I mean, there were some great people, but there were some real snakes, too. I was like, 'Holy cow!' But it made me a better person, and it got me ready for other things.

Saintliness is also a temptation.

Life is cruel and we do terrible things to each other.

I know what we do is right but right doesn't always mean easy.

I just found this world a hard place to be good in,’ says Bunny, then he closes his eyes and, with an expiration of breath, goes still.

I do care a great deal about the environment but my real work and my greatest challenge is trying to overcome deceits that end up jeopardizing public health and safety.

No one is so good that he is immune from temptation. We will never be entirely free from it. . . . There is no order so holy, no place so secret where there will be no temptation.

Doctors have been exposed-you always will be exposed-to the attacks of those persons who consider their own undisciplined emotions more important than the world's most bitter agonies-the people who would limit and cripple and hamper research because they fear research may be accompanied by a little pain and suffering.

We should be asking: How do we respond to a post-Christian society?

Good intentions are very mortal and perishable things. Like very mellow and choice fruit, they are difficult to keep.

I think that every educator, indeed every human being, is concerned with what is true and what is not; what experiences to cherish and which ones to avoid; and how best to relate to other human beings. We differ in how conscious we are of these questions; how reflective we are about our own stances; whether we are aware of how these human virtues are threatened by critiques (philosophical, cultural) and by technologies (chiefly the digital media). A good educator should help us all to navigate our way in this tangled web of virtues.

No one is immune to temptation. Not even a hero. Not even a nobody. Not even people like you and me. Lust is never very far away. And just when you least expect it, there it is again.

It is impossible for human beings, constituted as they are, both to fight and to have ideals.

Virtue shuns ease as a companion. It demands a rough and thorny path.

A good person is one who follows the Ten Commandments and the golden rule. There is plenty of precedent in history to guide us and we probably evolved to be sensitive to Bible-Golden Rule situations. But the dilemmas faced by a worker - a journalist, an architect, an auditor - or by a citizen (what position to take on stem cell research, whether to run for office, what is the proper balance between taxation and social nets) - are not questions that can be answered by traditional texts or precedents.

We are all members of the same flawed species. Putting our moral vision into practice means imposing our will on others. The human lust for power and esteem, coupled with its vulnerability to self-deception and self-righteousness, makes that an invitation to a calamity, all the worse when the power is directed at a goal as quixotic as eradicating human self-interest.

When sin lets us alone we may let sin alone; but as sin is never less quiet than when it seems to be most quiet, and its waters are for the most part deep when they are still, so ought our contrivances against it to be vigorous at all times and in all conditions, even where there is least suspicion.

We live in a time when complex ethical questions are easily subordinated to the demands of efficiency, profit maximization, and maintenance or furthering of political power.

Daja doesn't exactly need to be tested on whether she's honorable or not." "Doesn't she? Don't all of you? This is your first taste of the things which may come from your being powerful mages. People will offer you gold, status, even love. I want to know how you will react. If want to know if your teachers will release greedy, thoughtless monsters into the world.

There is a cannibalism that's loose in our society in which public figures such as the Clintons could try to come into this town and do something good for this country and then they get hammered away even though they're trying to do the right thing.