Ethical Obligation Quotes

The world will not be destroyed by those who do evil, but by those who watch them without doing anything.

Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing.

I have no duty to be anyone's Friend and no man in the world has a duty to be mine. No claims, no shadow of necessity. Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art, like the universe itself (for God did not need to create). It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things which give value to survival.

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.

In almost every profession - whether it's law or journalism, finance or medicine or academia or running a small business - people rely on confidential communications to do their jobs. We count on the space of trust that confidentiality provides. When someone breaches that trust, we are all worse off for it.

Civil disobedience becomes a sacred duty when the state has become lawless or corrupt. And a citizen who barters with such a state shares in its corruption and lawlessness.

One of the most destructive anti-concepts in the history of moral philosophy is the term 'duty.

The burning conviction that we have a holy duty toward others is often a way of attaching our drowning selves to a passing raft.

My views on charity are very simple. I do not consider it a major virtue and, above all, I do not consider it a moral duty. There is nothing wrong in helping other people, if and when they are worthy of the help and you can afford to help them. I regard charity as a marginal issue. What I am fighting is the idea that charity is a moral duty and a primary virtue.

I did only what my duty demanded. I could have taken no other course without dishonor.

A man can give up a right, but he may not give up a duty without being guilty of a grave dereliction.

The notion that I should be fine with the status quo even if I am not wholly affected by the status quo is repulsive.

I know that we will be the sufferers if we let great wrongs occur without exerting ourselves to correct them.

For evil to take place, the acts of a few people are not sufficient; the great majority also has to remain indifferent. That is something of which we are all quite capable.

Liberty is a duty, not a right.

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

Marriage is a duel to the death which no man of honour should decline.

Nor does the idea of a moral order asserting itself against attack or want of conformity answer in full to our feelings regarding the tragic character.

Leaving American disaster victims to languish is morally reprehensible and un-American.

There are some situations one simply cannot be neutral about, because when you are neutral you are an accomplice. Objectivity doesn't mean treating all sides equally. It means giving each side a hearing.

Duty is seldom liked either by the doer or the object ... And why should it be? It is not often of advantage to either.

You owe the companies nothing. You especially don't owe them any courtesy. They have re-arranged the world to put themselves in front of you. They never asked for your permission, don't even start asking for theirs.

Consciences keep silence more often than they should, that's why laws were created.

Commonplace though it may appear, this doing of one's duty embodies the highest ideal of life and character. There may be nothing heroic about it; but the common lot of men is not heroic.

Silence is complicity. All Republicans who stand mute in the face of Trump's latest racism are telling you who they really are.