Ethical Duty Quotes

Not to punish evil is equivalent to authorizing it.

Duty is ours; the consequences are the Lord God's

There is no such thing as duty. If you know that a thing is right, you want to do it. If you don't want to do it - it isn't right. If it's right and you don't want to do it - you don't know what right is and you're not a man.

Let not any one pacify his conscience by the delusion that he can do no harm if he takes no part, and forms no opinion. Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing.

People who won't help others in trouble "because they got into trouble through their own fault" would probably not throw a lifeline to a drowning person until they learned whether that person fell in through his or her own fault or not.

Only individuals have a sense of responsibility.

If I am virtuous and worthy, for whom should I not maintain a proper concern?

A weakened sense of responsibility does not weaken the fact of responsibility.

To renounce liberty is to renounce being a man, to surrender the rights of humanity and even its duties. For he who renounces everything no indemnity is possible. Such a renunciation is incompatible with man's nature; to remove all liberty from his will is to remove all morality from his acts.

It is wicked to withdraw from being useful to the needy, and cowardly to give way to the worthless.

Silence in the face of atrocity is not neutrality; silence in the face of atrocity is acquiescence.

To be human you must bear witness to justice.

Wherefore for the public interest and benefit of human society it is requisite that the highest obligations possible should be laid upon the consciences of men.

I'm overwhelmed by shame that the people who had the responsibility to take care of the tender ones violated that trust and caused them great pain.

If you go to your death rather than do everything you might to prevent what is happening, you are merely committing suicide and trying to make yourself feel better about it. That is the act of a coward. It is beneath contempt.

Who sweeps a room, as for Thy laws, makes that and the action fine.

What does our generation owe to generations yet unborn? ...there is an order in the universe which must be respected, and... the human person, endowed with the capability of choosing freely, has a grave responsibility to preserve this order for the well-being of future generations.

I am not aware that payment, or even favors, however gracious, bind any man's soul and conscience in questions of highest morality and highest importance.

Modern man is weighed down more by the burden of responsibility than by the burden of sin. We think him more a savior who shoulders our responsibilities than him who shoulders our sins. If instead of making decisions we have but to obey and do our duty, we feel it as a sort of salvation.

Men must be either the slaves of duty, or the slaves of force.

Someone will have to pay for the innocent blood that they shed every day.

Duties have been mine; consequences are God's.

Liberty is a duty, not a right.

The weakling and the coward cannot be saved by honesty alone; but without honesty the brave and able man is merely a civic wild beast who should be hunted down by every lover of righteousness. No man who is corrupt, no man who condones corruption in others, can possibly do his duty by the community.

Evil prevails when good people do nothing.