"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

"The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated."
— Mahatma Gandhi

"It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets."
— Voltaire

"Until he extends the circle of his compassion to all living things, man will not himself find peace."
— Albert Schweitzer

"The word "good" has many meanings. For example, if a man were to shoot his grandmother at a range of five hundred yards, I should call him a good shot, but not necessarily a good man."
— G.K. Chesterton

"Non-violence leads to the highest ethics, which is the goal of all evolution. Until we stop harming all other living beings, we are still savages."
— Thomas A. Edison

"You're trying to be tricky. What's morality?"

"It's the difference between what's right and what you can rationalize.

"Must be a human thing."

"Exactly."
— Christopher Moore

"Think occasionally of the suffering of which you spare yourself the sight."
— Albert Schweitzer

"I'm worried that students will take their obedient place in society and look to become successful cogs in the wheel - let the wheel spin them around as it wants without taking a look at what they're doing. I'm concerned that students not become passive acceptors of the official doctrine that's handed down to them from the White House, the media, textbooks, teachers and preachers"
— Howard Zinn

"I count him braver who overcomes his
desires than him who conquers his enemies,
for the hardest victory is over self."
— Aristotle

"You have just dined, and however scrupulously the slaughterhouse is concealed in the graceful distance of miles, there is complicity."
— Ralph Waldo Emerson

""It is naively assumed that the fact that the majority of people share certain ideas and feelings proves the validity of these ideas and feelings. Nothing could be further from the truth. Consensual validation as such has no bearing on reason or mental health.""
— Erich Fromm

"I count him braver who overcomes his desires than him who overcomes his enemies."
— Aristotle

"Animals are more than ever a test of our character, of mankind's capacity for empathy and for decent, honorable conduct and faithful stewardship. We are called to treat them with kindness, not because they have rights or power or some claim to equality, but in a sense because they don't; because they all stand unequal and powerless before us.
"
— Matthew Scully (Dominion: The Power of Man, the Suffering of Animals, and the Call to Mercy)

"The thinking (person) must oppose all cruel customs, no matter how deeply rooted in tradition and surrounded by a halo. When we have a choice, we must avoid bringing torment and injury into the life of another."
— Albert Schweitzer

"While we ourselves are the living graves of murdered beasts, how can we expect any ideal conditions on this earth?"
— George Bernard Shaw

"'The law of evolution is that the strongest survives!' 'Yes, and the strongest, in the existence of any social species, are those who are most social. In human terms, most ethical...There is no strength to be gained from hurting one another. Only weakness.'"
— Ursula K. LeGuin

"Whenever governments adopt a moral tone - as opposed to an ethical one - you know something is wrong."
— John Ralston Saul (The Unconscious Civilization)

"And if it harms none, do what you will"
— Wiccan Rede

"I do not believe in the immortality of the individual, and I consider ethics to be an exclusively human concern without any superhuman authority behind it."
— Albert Einstein

"Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants. We know more about war than we know about peace, more about killing than we know about living. We have grasped the mystery of the atom and rejected the Sermon on the Mount."
— Omar N. Bradley

"We have in fact, two kinds of morality, side by side: one which we preach, but do not practice, and another which we practice, but seldom preach."
— Bertrand Russell

"Acting responsibly is not a matter of strengthening our reason but of deepening our feelings for the welfare of others."
— Jostein Gaarder (Sophie's World)

"We often do good in order that we may do evil with impunity."
— Duc de La Rochefoucauld

"Do not speak a hurtful word,
for in everyone lives the true Lord.
Do not break anyone's heart,
for each heart
is a priceless pearl."
— Baba Sheikh Farid

"But for this book we could not know right from wrong. (When the committee for Colored People gave Lincoln a Bible in 1864)"
— Abraham Lincoln

"The Devil answer'd: bray a fool in a morter with wheat, yet shall not his folly be beaten out of him; if Jesus Christ is the greatest man, you ought to love him in the greatest degree; now hear how he has given his sanction to the law of ten commandments: did he not mock at the sabbath, and so mock the sabbaths God? murder those who were murder'd because of him? turn away the law from the woman taken in adultery? steal the labor of others to support him? bear false witness when he omitted making a defense before Pilate? covet when he pray'd for his disciples, and when he bid them shake off the dust of their feet against such as refused to lodge them? I tell you, no virtue can exist without breaking these ten commandments; Jesus was all virtue, and acted from impulse, not from rules."
— William Blake (The Marriage of Heaven and Hell: A Facsimile in Full Color)

"The disappearance of a sense of responsibility is the most far-reaching consequence of submission to authority."
— Stanley Milgram

"Not only to myself or before the mirror or at the hour of my death, which I hope will be long in coming, but in the presence of my children and my wife and in the face of the peaceful life I’m building, I must acknowledge: (1) That under Stalin I wouldn’t have wasted my youth in the gulag or ended up with a bullet in the back of my head. (2) That in the McCarthy era I wouldn’t have lost my job or had to pump gas at a gas station. (3) That under Hitler, however, I would have been one of those who chose the path of exile, and that under Franco I wouldn’t have composed sonnets to the caudillo or the Holy Virgin like so many lifelong democrats. One thing is as true as the other. My bravery has its limits, certainly, but so does what I’m willing to swallow. Everything that begins as comedy ends as tragicomedy."
— Roberto Bolaño (The Savage Detectives)

"We colour and mould according to the wants within us whatever our eyes bring in."
— Thomas Hardy (Far from the Madding Crowd)

"When morality comes up against profit, it is seldom that profit loses."
— Shirley Chisholm

"... luckily, Eden is soon populated. The ethical dimension begins when the other appears on the scene."
— Umberto Eco (Five Moral Pieces)

"Thus I assume that to each according to his threat advantage is not a conception of justice."
— John Rawls (A Theory of Justice)

"Observe how many people evade, rationalize and drive their minds into a state of blind stupor, in dread of discovering that those they deal with- their "loved ones" or friends or business associates or political rulers- are not merely mistaken, but evil. Observe that this dread leads them to sanction, to help and to spread the very evil whose existence they fear to acknowledge."
— Ayn Rand (The Virtue of Selfishness)

"Ethics are so annoying. I avoid them on principle."
— Darby Conley

"You know yourself what you are worth in your own eyes; and at what price you will sell yourself. For men sell themselves at various prices. This is why, when Florus was deliberating whether he should appear at Nero's shows, taking part in the performance himself, Agrippinus replied, 'Appear by all means.' And when Florus inquired, 'But why do not you appear?' he answered, 'Because I do not even consider the question.' For the man who has once stooped to consider such questions, and to reckon up the value of external things, is not far from forgetting what manner of man he is."
— Epictetus (The Golden Sayings of Epictetus)

"Sustainability before ambition. Okal Rel."
— Lynda Williams

"Blood makes lousy detergent."
— Lynda Williams

"In the newspapers the row about the prospect of genetically modified food raged on, and yet here were consumers effectively demanding lambs with four back legs."
— Rose Prince

"His moral lecture
blazed with hate.
What could have driven a child that far?"
— Dag Hammarskjöld (Markings)

"Similarly with regard to truth, won't we say that a soul is maimed if it hates a voluntary falsehood, cannot endure to have one in itself, and is greatly angered when it exists in others, but is nonetheless content to accept an involuntary falsehood, isn't angry when it is caught being ignorant, and bears its lack of learning easily, wallowing in it like a pig?"
— Plato