Ethical Discernment Quotes

It is the duty of men to judge men only by their actions. Our faculties furnish us with no means of arriving at the motive, the character, the secret self. We call the tree good from its fruits, and the man, from his works.

I know one thing you don't. I know the difference between Right and Wrong. They didn't teach you that at school.' Rose didn't answer; the woman was quite right: the two words meant nothing to her. Their taste was extinguished by stronger foods--Good and Evil.

Give us, we pray, the power to discern clearly right from wrong, and allow all our words and actions to be governed thereby, and by the laws of this land. Especially we pray that our concern shall be for all the people regardless of station, race, or calling.

There exists in our society widespread fear of judging…[B]ehind the unwillingness to judge lurks the suspicion that no one is a free agent, and hence doubt that anyone is responsible or could be expected to answer for what he has done…Who has ever maintained that by judging a wrong I presuppose that I myself would be incapable of committing it?

Inability to tell good from evil is the greatest worry of man's life.

God judges what we give by what we keep.

The soul's impurity consists in bad judgements, and purification consists in producing in it right judgements, and the pure soul is one which has right judgements, for this alone is proof against confusion and pollution in its functions.

We can no more tolerate neutrality and benevolence toward every conceivable form of discourse, including that of magical thinking, than we can lump together executioner and victim, good and evil.

Censors are dead men set up to judge between life and death. For no live, sunny man would be a censor, he'd just laugh.

I think of the need for more wisdom in the world, to deal with the knowledge that we have. At one time we had wisdom, but little knowledge. Now we have a great deal of knowledge, but do we have enough wisdom to deal with that knowledge?

I understood, not with my intellect but with my whole being, that no theories of the rationality of existence or of progress could justify such an act; I realized that even if all the people in the world from the day of creation found this to be necessary according to whatever theory, I knew that it was not necessary and that it was wrong. Therefore, my judgments must be based-on what is right and necessary and not on what people say and do; I must judge not according to progress but according to my own heart.

And what is good, Phaedrus, And what is not good— Need we ask anyone to tell us these things?

Thanks to Allah, I trust myself to distinguish between right and wrong.

If you can't distinguish people from lap-dogs, you shouldn't undertake philanthropic work.

The discrimination between good and evil is in man's soul. Every man can judge that for himself, because in every man is the sense of admiration of beauty. Happiness only lies in thinking or doing that which one considers beautiful. Such an act becomes a virtue or goodness.

No official yet born on this earth is wise enough or generous enough to separate good ideas from bad ideas, good beliefs from bad.

The Inquisition confused sin with sinners and judged both. Modern Americans make the same mistake but judge neither.

The loss of taste for what is right is loss of all right taste.

An education which does not teach us to discriminate between good and bad, to assimilate the one and eschew the other, is a misnomer

If this is the vaunted superiority our Government and the purity of our elective institutions, I do not think we have so much to be proud of, and morality and religion are of little use if they cannot teach us to discern the difference between right and wrong.

Many an act that man does is right or wrong according to the time and place which form, so to speak, its context; strip it of its surrounding circumstances, and you tear away its meaning. Gentlemen reformers, beware of this common practice of yours! Beware of calling an act evil on Tuesday because that same act was evil on Monday!

You got to wrestle with your conscience. You got to listen to people. It doesn't come so easy to me that this is right and that's wrong. It's never that simple.

Would you who judge of the lawfulness or unlawfulness of pleasure, take this rule; whatever weakens your reason, impairs the tenderness of your conscience, obscures your sense of God, or takes off the relish of spiritual things; in short; whatever increases the strength and authority of your body over your mind, that is sin to you; however innocent it may be in itself.

Tolerance once meant that we could use our reason to discern good and evil in open debate. Today tolerance has been used to call good evil and evil good.

Biblical references about knowledge and good and evil often get tangled up.