A Quote by Michael Josephson
Ethics is doing more than the law requires and less than the law allows.
Related Quotes
Multi-millionaires who pay half or less than half of the percentage of tax the rest of us pay justify their actions by saying they pay what the law requires. Though true, the fact is they found ways within the law to beat the purpose of the law - which, in the case of taxes, is that we all pay our fair share.
Control in modern times requires more than force, more than law. It requires that a population dangerously concentrated in cities and factories, whose lives are filled with cause for rebellion, be taught that all is right as it is.
Fidelity and allegiance sworn to the King is only such a fidelity and obedience as is due to him by the law of the land; for were that faith and allegiance more than what the law requires, we would swear ourselves slaves and the King absolute; whereas, by the law, we are free men, notwithstanding those oaths.
I believe, assume the power to decide more political than legal issues in nature, the people naturally focus less on the law and more on the lawyers that are chosen really to administer the law.
In seeking for justice men seek for the mean or neutral, for the law is the mean. Again, customary laws have more weight, and relate to more important matters, than written laws, and a man may be a safer ruler than the written law, but not safer than the customary law.
Frequently you have a clash between the more sterile letter of the law and the justice that underlies it, and I think one of the things I've been trying more or less, where it was possible, is to go with the justice rather than the letter of the law.
It is far more important the law should be administered with absolute integrity, than that in this case or in that the law should be a good law or a bad one.
The answer is that there is no good answer. So as parents, as doctors, as judges, and as a society, we fumble through and make decisions that allow us to sleep at night--because morals are more important than ethics, and love is more important than law.
Theres one fundamental law that all of nature obeys that mankind breaks every day. Now, this is a law thats evolved over billions of years, and the law is this: Nothing in nature takes more than it needs.
There's one fundamental law that all of nature obeys that mankind breaks every day. Now, this is a law that's evolved over billions of years, and the law is this: Nothing in nature takes more than it needs.
The law hath so many contradictions and varyings from itself, that the law may not improperly be called a law-breaker. It is become too changeable a thing to be defined: it is made little less a Mystery than the Gospel. The clergy and the lawyers, like the Freemasons, may be supposed to take an oath not to tell the secret.
We are less than atoms, I say, because the atom obeys the law of its being, whereas we in the insolence of our ignorance deny the law of nature. But I have no argument to address to those who have no faith.
There is but one law for all, namely that law which governs all law, the law of our Creator, the law of humanity, justice, equity - the law of nature and of nations.
I think one of the most important directions to be pursued in the 'sciences of human action' is to develop a natural-law ethics based on nature rather than, or at least to supplement, ethics based on theological revelation.
I gravitate toward the law, I think, certainly more times than not, because it's our best mechanism for legislating human behavior, and morality, and ethics.
But the law is an odd thing. For instance, one country in Europe has a law that requires all its bakers to sell bread at the exact same price. A certain island has a law that forbids anyone from removing its fruit. And a town not too far from where you live has a law that bars me from coming within five miles of its borders.
