Ethics Quotes

The first step in the evolution of ethics
is a sense of solidarity with other human beings.
- Albert Schweitzer

Related topics: Values Unity

I do not believe in immortality of the individual,
and I consider ethics to be an exclusively human concern
with no superhuman authority behind it.
- Albert Einstein

Compassion, in which all ethics must take root,
can only attain its full breadth and depth
if it embraces all living creatures
and does not limit itself to mankind.
- Albert Schweitzer

Ethics is the activity of man directed to secure
the inner perfection of his own personality.
- Albert Schweitzer

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Thank you for joining me on this journey we call life,
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Let me give you a definition of ethics:
It is good to maintain and further life
it is bad to damage and destroy life.
- Albert Schweitzer

Ethics is nothing else than reverence for life.
- Albert Schweitzer

I can do no other than be reverent
before everything that is called life.
I can do no other than to have compassion
for all that is called life.
That is the beginning and the foundation of all ethics.
- Albert Schweitzer

A man is truly ethical only when he obeys
the compulsion to help all life which he is able to assist,
and shrinks from injuring anything that lives.
- Albert Schweitzer

A man is ethical only when life, as such, is sacred to him,
that of plants and animals as that of his fellow men,
and when he devotes himself helpfully
to all life that is in need of help.
- Albert Schweitzer

It is an open question whether any behavior
based on fear of eternal punishment
can be regarded as ethical
or should be regarded as merely cowardly.
- Margaret Mead

Adventure is not outside man; it is within.
- George Eliot

Nearly all men can stand adversity,
but if you want to test a man's character, give him power.
- Abraham Lincoln

Man is least himself when he talks in his own person.
Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.
- Oscar Wilde

No man stands so tall as when he stoops to help a child.
- Anonymous (often attributed to Abraham Lincoln)

Talent is God-given; be humble.
Fame is man-given; be thankful.
Conceit is self-given; be careful.
- John Wooden

If a man is called to be a street sweeper,
he should sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted,
or Beethoven composed music, or Shakespeare wrote poetry.
He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts
of heaven and earth will pause to say,
here lived a great street sweeper who did his job well.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.

Two things a man should never be angry at:
what he can help,
and what he cannot help.
- Thomas Fuller

Every child comes with the message
that God is not yet discouraged of man.
- Rabindranath Tagore

We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men
who walked through the huts comforting others,
giving away their last piece of bread...
They offer sufficient proof that everything
can be taken from a man but one thing:
to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances,
to choose one's own way.
- Viktor E. Frankl

A man wrapped up in himself makes a very small bundle.
- Benjamin Franklin

Whatever your life's work is, do it well.
A man should do his job so well that the living,
the dead, and the unborn could do it no better.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.

Any man who reads too much
and uses his own brain too little
falls into lazy habits of thinking.
- Albert Einstein

You cannot build character and courage by
taking away a man's initiative and independence.
- Abraham Lincoln

The secret of success in life is for a man to be ready
for his opportunity when it comes.
- Benjamin Disraeli

Many a man fails as an original thinker
simply because his memory is too good.
- Nietzsche

The value of a man should be seen in what he gives
and not in what he is able to receive.
- Albert Einstein

When you are offended at any man's fault,
turn to yourself and study your own failings.
Then you will forget your anger.
- Epictetus

If a man speaks or acts with a pure thought,
happiness follows him, like a shadow that never leaves him.
- The Buddha

If a man loses pace with his companions,
perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer.
Let him step to the music which he hears,
however measured or far away.
- Henry David Thoreau

Take a chance! All life is a chance.
The man who goes farthest is generally
the one who is willing to do and dare.
- Dale Carnegie

Man lives freely only by his readiness to die, if need be,
at the hands of his brother, never by killing him.
- Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi

If thou wilt make a man happy,
add not unto his riches but take away from his desires.
- Epicurus

The ultimate test of a man's conscience
may be his willingness to sacrifice something today
for future generations whose words of thanks will not be heard.
- Gaylord Nelson

Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day,
teach a man to fish and he will eat for a lifetime.
- Chinese Proverb

A man does what he must - in spite of personal consequences,
in spite of obstacles and dangers and pressures -
and that is the basis of all human morality.
- John F. Kennedy

There is a sufficiency in the world
for man's need but not for man's greed.
- Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi

Resistance to the organized mass can be effected only
by the man who is as well organized
in his individuality as the mass itself.
- Carl Jung

Many a man curses the rain that falls upon his head,
and knows not that it brings abundance
to drive away the hunger.
- Saint Basil

If a man does not know what port he is steering for,
no wind is favorable to him.
- Seneca

A man is what he thinks about all day long.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

If a man can... make a better mousetrap,
the world will make a beaten path to his door.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he.
- The Bible

That man is rich whose pleasures are the cheapest.
- Henry David Thoreau

Behind an able man there are always other able men.
- Chinese proverb

The man who has won millions at the cost of his conscience is a failure.
- B. C. Forbes

Every man dies. Not every man truly lives.
- the movie Braveheart

Non-violence is the greatest force at the disposal of mankind.
It is mightier than the mightiest weapon of destruction
devised by the ingenuity of man.
- Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi

As soon as man does not take his existence for granted,
but beholds it as something
unfathomably mysterious, thought begins.
- Albert Schweitzer

All things share the same breath -
the beast, the tree, the man...
the air shares its spirit with all the life it supports.
- Chief Seattle (attributed)

The true measure of a man is how he treats someone
who can do him absolutely no good.
- Samuel Johnson

No great man ever complains of want of opportunity.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

A great man is always willing to be little.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

If a man loses his reverence for any part of life,
he will lose his reverence for all of life.
- Albert Schweitzer

You cannot teach a man anything;
you can only help him find it within himself.
- Galileo Galilei

A man's good name is his best monument
- from an old churchyard at Lockerbie, Scotland

A man can do only what he can do.
But if he does that each day he can sleep at night
and do it again the next day.
- Albert Schweitzer

I am the wisest man alive, for I know one thing,
and that is that I know nothing.
- Socrates

Only a man's character is the real criterion of worth.
- Eleanor Roosevelt

A man who is a master of patience is master of everything else.
- George Savile

During the first period of a man's life
the greatest danger is not to take the risk.
- Soren Kierkegaard

No man who is occupied in doing a very difficult thing,
and doing it very well, ever loses his self-respect.
- George Bernard Shaw

The essence of philosophy is that a man should so live
that his happiness shall depend
as little as possible on external things.
- Epictetus

Intent is what can make a man succeed
when his thoughts tell him that he is defeated.
- Carlos Castaneda

I submit to you that if a man hasn't
discovered something that he will die for,
he isn't fit to live.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.

A man may die, nations may rise and fall, but an idea lives on.
- John F. Kennedy

A man who does not think for himself does not think at all.
- Oscar Wilde

Man must evolve for all human conflict,
a method which rejects
revenge, aggression and retaliation.
The foundation of such a method is love.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.

We like a man to come right out and say what he thinks-
if we agree with him.
- Mark Twain

The gem cannot be polished without friction,
nor man perfected without trials.
- Confucius

It is what a man thinks of himself
that really determines his fate.
- Henry David Thoreau

There is no limit to what a man can do
or where he can go,
if he doesn't mind who gets the credit.
- Robert Woodruff

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May the world be kind to you, and may your own thoughts be gentle upon yourself.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie