Ethical Decisions Quotes

Human beings judge one another by their external actions. God judges them by their moral choices.

One's philosophy is not best expressed in words; it is expressed in the choices one makes... and the choices we make are ultimately our responsibility.

It's so much easier to do good than to be good.

Each generation, as it seeks to advance the common good, must ask anew: 'What are the requirements that governments may reasonably impose upon citizens, and how far do they extend? By appeal to what authority can moral dilemmas be resolved?'

The great political questions are in their final analysis great moral questions.

Good men make good decisions.

Good and evil have nothing to do with gods. It has to do with us.

I'm beginning to think the only choice anyone has in life is between either a bad choice or a worse one.

It’s less important to have unanimity than it is making the right decisions and doing the right thing, even though at the outset it might be loathsome.

The pure and simple truth Is rarely pure and never simple. What's a boy to do When lies and truth are both sinful?

There's a constant contradiction between what feels good and what feels right. But you live with decisions that you make in your life.

They tend to be pretty abstract ones then, like doing what will have the best consequences; obviously you wouldn't specify what consequences are best, they may be different in some circumstances, so at a lower, more specific level, you may well get differences.

How many times in life can we make decisions that are important but will not hurt anyone? Are we obligated- maybe we are- to say yes to any choice when no one will be hurt? We use the word hurt when talking about things like this because when these things go wrong it can feel as if you were hit in the sternum by a huge animal that's run for miles just to strike you.

I believe firmly that in making ethical decisions, man has the prerogative of true freedom of choice.

The choice of life is not between fame and fortune, nor wealth and poverty, but between good and evil.

But all morality is of necessity shaped by context. I'm not talking relativism, no. To ignore the context of a decision is in fact immoral.

And I realize that the decision to be human is not one single instant, but is a thousand choices made very day. It is choices we make every second and requires constant vigilance. We have to fight to remain human.

Man’s will is free to follow his inclinations, but fallen man’s inclinations are always and invariably away from God.

Why should ethical decisions as personal as those involved in reproduction and medical care be decided by democratic vote?

Your character is the harvest of your habits.

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 can choose the way of compassion, the way of forgiveness, the way of generosity. Or we can choose other paths and those have very real consequences in the world. This is absolutely crucial.

Moving forward will not be for the faint of heart. But if the next century witnesses failure, let it be because our science is not yet up to the job, not because we don't have the courage to make less random the sometimes most unfair courses of human evolution.

The literary depiction of life and its moral dilemmas compel us to use our conscience, to make those infallible distinctions between right and wrong.

Opinions upon moral questions are more often the expression of strongly felt expediency than of careful ethical reasoning