These ethics quotes will inspire you. Ethics rules of behavior are based on ideas about what is morally good and bad or moral principles that govern a person’s behavior or the conducting of an activity.
A collection of motivating, happy, and encouraging ethics quotes, ethics sayings, and ethics proverbs.
Inspirational Ethics Quotes
- “Ethics is knowing the difference between what you have a right to do and what is right to do.” ~ Potter Stewart
- “Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, ambition inspired, and success achieved.” ~ Helen Keller
- “The time is always right to do what is right.” ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.
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“When I do good, I feel good. When I do bad, I feel bad. That’s my religion.” ~ Abraham Lincoln
- “Faced with what is right, to leave it undone shows a lack of courage.” ~ Confucius
- “A people that values its privileges above its principles soon loses both.” ~ Dwight D. Eisenhower
- “Disciplining yourself to do what you know is right and important, although difficult, is the high road to pride, self-esteem, and personal satisfaction.” ~ Margaret Thatcher
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“Relativity applies to physics, not ethics.” ~ Albert Einstein
- “In law, a man is guilty when he violates the rights of others. In ethics, he is guilty if he only thinks of doing so.” ~ Immanuel Kant
- “Dangerous consequences will follow when politicians and rulers forget moral principles. Whether we believe in God or karma, ethics is the foundation of every religion.” ~ Dalai Lama
- “Nothing that is morally wrong can be politically right.” ~ William E. Gladstone
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“Without ethics, everything happens as if we were all five billion passengers on a big machinery and nobody is driving the machinery. And it’s going faster and faster, but we don’t know where.” ~ Jacques Yves Cousteau
- “In matters of style, swim with the current; in matters of principle, stand like a rock.” ~ Thomas Jefferson
- “Integrity is telling myself the truth. And honesty is telling the truth to other people.” ~ Spencer Johnson
- “Try not to become a man of success, but a man of value. Look around at how people want to get more out of life than they put in. A man of value will give more than he receives. Be creative, but make sure that what you create is not a curse for mankind.” ~ Albert Einstein
- “A man’s ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties and needs; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death.” ~ Albert Einstein
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“Do not be too moral. You may cheat yourself out of much life so. Aim above morality. Be not simply good; be good for something.” ~ Henry David Thoreau
- “Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and awe, the oftener and more steadily we reflect on them: the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me.” ~ Immanuel Kant
- “Have the courage to say no. Have the courage to face the truth. Do the right thing because it is right. These are the magic keys to living your life with integrity.” ~ W. Clement Stone
- “Moralities, ethics, laws, customs, beliefs, doctrines – these are of trifling import. All that matters is that the miraculous become the norm.” ~ Henry Miller
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“If ethics are poor at the top, that behavior is copied down through the organization.” ~ Robert Noyce
- “We don’t set out to save the world; we set out to wonder how other people are doing and to reflect on how our actions affect other people’s hearts.” ~ Pema Chodron
- “Even the most rational approach to ethics is defenseless if there isn’t the will to do what is right.” ~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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“I consider ethics, as well as religion, as supplements to law in the government of man.” ~ Thomas Jefferson
- “Little progress can be made by merely attempting to repress what is evil. Our great hope lies in developing what is good.” ~ Calvin Coolidge
- “There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protest.” ~ Elie Wiesel
- “Ethics, too, are nothing but reverence for life. This is what gives me the fundamental principle of morality, namely, that good consists in maintaining, promoting, and enhancing life, and that destroying, injuring, and limiting life are evil.” ~ Albert Schweitzer
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“It is better to deserve honors and not have them than to have them and not deserve them.” ~ Mark Twain
- “A man without ethics is a wild beast loosed upon this world.” ~ Albert Camus
- “Ethics or simple honesty is the building blocks upon which our whole society is based, and business is a part of our society, and it’s integral to the practice of being able to conduct business, that you have a set of honest standards. And it’s much easier to do business with someone when you look them in the eye and say, “This is what we’re going to do,” and you understand what you each mean, and you can go away and get it done.” ~ Kerry Stokes , Business ethics quotes
- “The involuntary character of psychiatric treatment is at odds with the spirit and ethics of medicine itself.” ~ Kate Millett
- “No one in the world can change Truth. What we can do and should do is to seek truth and to serve it when we have found it. The real conflict is the inner conflict. Beyond armies of occupation and the hecatombs [e.g. the sacrifice of many victims] of extermination camps, there are two irreconcilable enemies in the depth of every soul: good and evil, sin and love. And what use are the victories on the battlefield if we ourselves are defeated in our innermost personal selves?” ~ Maximilian Kolbe
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“Men acquire a particular quality by constantly acting in a particular way.” ~ Aristotle
- “Stand for something. Don’t quest for popularity at the expense of morality and ethics and honesty.” ~ Howard Cosell
- “You do not know our culture, our ethics, or the unwritten codes that already provide our society more order than could be obtained by any of your impositions.” ~ John Perry Barlow
- “Let us raise a standard to which the wise and honest can repair; the rest is in the hands of God.” ~ George Washington
- “Peace in the world depends on peace in the hearts of individuals; this depends on each of us practicing ethics by disciplining our negative thoughts and emotions, and developing basic spiritual qualities.” ~ Dalai Lama
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“Ethics must begin at the top of an organization. It is a leadership issue and the chief executive must set the example.” ~ Edward F. Hennessey
- “Compassion is the basis of morality.” ~ Arthur Schopenhauer
- “The most important persuasion tool you have in your entire arsenal is integrity.” ~ Zig Ziglar
- “My personal philosophy of life is one of ethics” ~ Alva Myrdal
- “To act without rapacity, to use knowledge with wisdom, to respect interdependence, to operate without hubris and greed are not simply moral imperatives. They are an accurate scientific description of the means of survival.” ~ Barbara Ward, Baroness Jackson of Lodsworth
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“We are all members of the same great family … On social occasions, the formality of strictly military occasions should be relaxed, and a spirit of friendliness and goodwill should prevail.” ~ John A. Lejeune
- “Personally, I have nothing against work, particularly when performed, quietly and unobtrusively, by someone else. I just don’t happen to think it’s an appropriate subject for an ‘ethic.'” ~ Barbara Ehrenreich , Ethics quotes for work
- “There is no such thing as business ethics. There is only one kind — you have to adhere to the highest standards.” ~ Marvin Bower
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“In statesmanship get formalities right, never mind about the moralities.” ~ Mark Twain
- “Science cannot stop while ethics catches up … and nobody should expect scientists to do all the thinking for the country.” ~ Elvin C. Stakman
- “I would like us to think about it more explicitly, and not take our intuitions as the given of ethics, but rather to reflect on it, and be more open about the fact that something is an ethical issues and think what we ought to do about it.” ~ Peter Singer
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“Actually, there is only one first question of government, and it is How should we live? or What kind of people do we want our citizens to be?” ~ George Will
- “I say statecraft is soulcraft. Just as all education is moral education because learning conditions conduct, most legislation is moral legislations because it conditions the action and the thought of the nation in broad and important spheres in life.” ~ George Will
- “I hope I shall possess firmness and virtue enough to maintain what I consider the most enviable of all titles, the character of an honest man.” ~ George Washington
- “This world is white no longer, and it will never be white again.” ~ James A. Baldwin
- “We’re given a code to live our lives by. We don’t always follow it, but it’s still there.” ~ Gary Oldman
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“Only that which does not teach, which does not cry out, which does not condescend, which does not explain, is irresistible.” ~ William Butler Yeats
- “The first step in the evolution of ethics is a sense of solidarity with other human beings.” ~ Albert Schweitzer
- “Associate with men of good quality if you esteem your own reputation; for it is better to be alone than in bad company.” ~ George Washington
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“Ethics is in origin the art of recommending to others the sacrifices required for cooperation with oneself.” ~ Bertrand Russell
- “Freedom is the natural condition of the human race, in which the Almighty intended men to live. Those who fight the purpose of the Almighty will not succeed. They always have been, they always will be beaten.” ~ Abraham Lincoln
- “Human dignity can be achieved only in the field of ethics, and ethical achievement is measured by the degree in which our actions are governed by compassion and love, not by greed and aggressiveness.” ~ Arnold J. Toynbee , Love ethics quotes
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“A man is ethical only when life, as such, is sacred to him.” ~ Albert Schweitzer
- “This House cannot function without an open, accountable, and independent ethics process; and the molestation of that process by the majority is an abuse of power that cannot stand.” ~ Louise Slaughter
- “Thus Christian humanism is as indispensable to the Christian way of life as Christian ethics and a Christian sociology.” ~ Christopher Dawson
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“Evangelical faith without Christian ethics is a travesty on the gospel.” ~ V. Raymond Edman
- “You’re born with intelligence, but not with ethics.” ~ Massad Ayoob
- “The needs of a society determine its ethics.” ~ Maya Angelou
