IMPORTANT QUOTES FOR UPSC CIVIL SERVICES ETHICS PAPER

Education

“Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.”

―Nelson Mandela

“By education I mean an all-round drawing out of the best in child and man-body, mind and spirit. Literacy is not the end of education or even the beginning.”

– M. K. Gandhi

“Real knowledge is to know the extent of one’s ignorance.”

- Confucius

“The highest education is that which does not merely give us information but makes our life in harmony with all existence.”

– Rabindranath Tagore

“Education is not the learning of facts, but the training of minds to think.”

–Albert Einstein

“Education is the transmission of civilization.”

 –Will Durant

“Education without values, as useful as it is, seems rather to make man a cleverer devil.”

― C.S. Lewis

“What is really needed to make democracy function is not knowledge of facts, but right education.”

– M. K. Gandhi

“Basic education links the children, whether of the cities or the villages, to all that is best and lasting in India.”

– M. K. Gandhi

“If we want to reach real peace in this world, we should start educating children.”

– M. K. Gandhi

“There is only one purpose in the whole of life — education. Otherwise what is the use of men and women, land and wealth?”

– Swami Vivekananda

“Educate and raise the masses, and thus alone a nation is possible.”

– Swami Vivekananda

"We want the education by which character is formed, strength of mind is increased, the intellect is expanded, and by which one can stand on one's own feet"

— Swami Vivekananda

“Education is the manifestation of the perfection already in man.”

– Swami Vivekananda

“To educate a man in mind and not in morals is to educate a menace to society.”

-Theodore Roosevelt

Gender Equality

“How important it is for us to recognize and celebrate our heroes and she-roes!”

― Maya Angelou

"A gender-equal society would be one where the word 'gender' does not exist: where everyone can be themselves."

— Gloria Steinem

“Achieving gender equality requires the engagement of women and men, girls and boys. It is everyone’s responsibility.”

— Ban Ki-moon

“Gender equality is more than a goal in itself. It is a precondition for meeting the challenge of reducing poverty, promoting sustainable development and building good governance.”

— Kofi Annan

“Freedom cannot be achieved unless women have been emancipated from all kinds of oppression.”

— Nelson Mandela

“No country can every truly flourish if it stifles the potential of its women and deprives itself of the contribution of half its citizens.”

― Michelle Obama

“I raise my voice not so I can shout, but so that those without a voice can be heard. We cannot succeed when half of us are held back.”

― Malala Yousafzai

“We’ve begun to raise daughters more like sons… but few have the courage to raise our sons more like our daughters.”

― Gloria Steinem

Women

“The Day a Woman Can Walk freely on the Roads, That Day we Can Say that India Achieved Independence.”

– M. K. Gandhi

“You educate a man; you educate a man. You educate a woman; you educate a generation.”

–Brigham Young

"The measure of any society is how it treats its women and girls"

— Michelle Obama

"To educate girls is to reduce poverty"

— Kofi Annan

"Women's liberation is the liberation of the feminine in the man and the masculine in the woman.”

— Corita Kent

"I do not wish women to have power over men; but over themselves."

— Mary Shelley

"I measure the progress of a community by the degree of progress which women have achieved."

— B. R. Ambedkar

“I believe the rights of women and girls are the unfinished business of the 21st Century.

— Hillary Clinton

“In the future, there will be no female leaders. There will just be leaders.”

- Sheryl Sandberg

“Women are the largest untapped reservoir of talent in the world.”

- Hillary Clinton

Tolerance and Peace

“The day the power of love overrules the love of power, the world will know peace.”

― MK Gandhi

“In the practice of tolerance, one’s enemy is the best teacher.”

–Dalai Lama

“The highest result of education is tolerance.”

–Helen Keller

“Anger and intolerance are the twin enemies of correct understanding.”

–Mahatma Gandhi

“Through the centuries, the history of peoples is but a lesson in mutual tolerance.”

–Emile Zola

“We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools.”

–Martin Luther King, Jr.

If civilization is to survive, we must cultivate the science of human relationships - the ability of all peoples, of all kinds, to live together, in the same world at peace.

—  Franklin Roosevelt

Change

“Everything changes but change itself.”

- John F. Kennedy

“Impermanence is the law of the universe.”

- Carlene Hatcher Polite

“Where the old tracks are lost, new country is revealed with its wonders.”

- Rabindranath Tagore

“Only in growth, reform, and change, paradoxically enough, is true security to be found.”

- Anne Morrow Lindbergh

“Change is inevitable in a progressive society. Change is constant.”

- Benjamin Disraeli

“Progress is impossible without change, and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.”

- George Bernard Shaw

Courage

“The best way out is always through.”

―Robert Frost

Inequality

“I believe that virtually all the problems in the world come from inequality of one kind or another.”

- Amartya Sen

“Progress is more plausibly judged by the reduction of deprivation than by the further enrichment of the opulent.”

- Amartya Sen

“A nation will not survive morally or economically when so few have so much and so many have so little.”

-Bernie Sanders

“There can be no peace as long as there is grinding poverty, social injustice, inequality, oppression, environmental degradation, and as long as the weak and small continue to be trodden by the mighty and powerful.”

-Dalai Lama

“The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much it is whether we provide enough for those who have little.”

- Franklin D. Roosevelt

Character

“Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power.”

— Abraham Lincoln,

“Always do right. This will gratify some people, and astonish the rest.”

- Mark Twain

“The great hope of society is individual character.”

- William Ellery Channing

Conscience

“Conscience is a man's compass.”

- Vincent van Gogh

“Never do anything against conscience even if the state demands it.”

- Albert Einstein

“There is no witness so terrible and no accuser so powerful as conscience which dwells within us.”

- Sophocles

Poverty

“Overcoming poverty is not a gesture of charity. It is an act of justice.”

- Nelson Mandela

“Extreme poverty anywhere is a threat to human security everywhere.”

— Kofi Annan

“Poverty is like punishment for a crime you didn’t commit.”

– Eli Khamarov

“Poverty is the parent of revolution and crime.”

– Aristotle

“We cannot afford to spend millions and millions over nuclear arms when there is poverty and unemployment all around us.”

– Lal Bahadur Shastri

“As long as poverty, injustice and gross inequality exist in the world, none of us can truly exist.”

– Nelson Mandela

“A nation's greatness is measured by how it treats its weakest members.”

- Mahatma Gandhi 

“There's enough on this planet for everyone's needs but not for everyone's greed.”

- Mahatma Gandhi

“To a man with an empty stomach food is God”

- Mahatma Gandhi

 “Poverty is not an accident. Like slavery and apartheid, it is man-made and can be removed by the actions of human beings..”

- Nelson Mandela

Agriculture

“Agriculture was the first occupation of man, and as it embraces the whole earth, it is the foundation of all other industries.”

- E. W. Stewart

“No race can prosper till it learns there is as much dignity in tilling a field as in writing a poem.”

- Booker T. Washington

Integrity

“Integrity without knowledge is weak and useless, and knowledge without integrity is dangerous and dreadful.”

- Samuel Johnson

Real integrity is doing the right thing, knowing that nobody's going to know whether you did it or not.    

- Oprah Winfrey

“Courage combined with integrity is the foundation of character.”

- Brian Tracy

Environment

"The greatest threat to our planet is the belief that someone else will save it".

- Robert Swan

"What we are doing to the forests of the world is but a mirror reflection of what we are doing to ourselves and one another".

- Mahatma Gandhi

"What is the good of having a nice house without a decent planet to put it on?"

- Henry David Thoreau

“The environment is where we all meet; where we all have a mutual interest; it is the one thing all of us share.”

- Lady Bird Johnson

“The ultimate test of man’s conscience may be his willingness to sacrifice something today for future generations whose words of thanks will not be heard.”

— Gaylord Nelson

“The Earth is a fine place and worth fighting for.”

— Ernest Hemingway

Sustainable Development

“Our ancestors did great work for humanity. What will we do for the next generations?”

- By Lailah Gifty Akita

“There is no ‘Plan B’ because we do not have a ‘Planet B.’ We have to work and galvanize our action.”

“There must be a better way to make the things we want, a way that doesn't spoil the sky, or the rain or the land.”

- Paul McCartney

“There are no passengers on spaceship earth. We are all crew.”

- Marshall McLuhan

“Because we don't think about future generations, they will never forget us.”

- Henrik Tikkanen

“Forests are the lungs of our land.”

- Franklin D. Roosevelt

Quotes by Gandhi

• You must be the change you wish to see in the world.
• The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.
• Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.
• Live as if you were to die tomorrow; learn as if you were to live forever.
• First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.
• You must not lose faith in humanity. Humanity is an ocean; if a few drops of the ocean are dirty, the ocean does not become dirty.
• The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others.
• Strength does not come from physical capacity. It comes from an indomitable will.
• A man is but the product of his thoughts; what he thinks, he becomes.
• The future depends on what you do today.
• The difference between what we do and what we are capable of doing would suffice to solve most of the world’s problems.
• It’s my conviction that nothing enduring can be built on violence.
• Freedom is not worth having if it does not include the freedom to make mistakes.
• Nobody can hurt me without my permission.
• I will not let anyone walk through my mind with their dirty feet.
• The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated.
• Change yourself – you are in control.
• Without action, you aren’t going anywhere.
• A coward is incapable of exhibiting love; it is the prerogative of the brave.

Quotes by Swami Vivekananda

• Arise,awake and donot stop until the goal is reached.
• We are what our thoughts have made us; so take care about what you think. Words are secondary. Thoughts live; they travel far.
• Truth can be stated in a thousand different ways, yet each one can be true.
• Superstition is our great enemy, but bigotry is worse. If superstition enters, the brain is gone.

Quotes by Tagore

• You can't cross the sea merely by standing and staring at the water.
• The highest education is that which does not merely give us information but makes our life in harmony with all existence.
• Don't limit a child to your own learning, for he was born in another time.
• Patriotism cannot be our final spiritual shelter; my refuge is humanity. I will not buy glass for the price of diamonds, and I will never allow patriotism to triumph over humanity as long as I live.
• Discipline divorced from wisdom is not true discipline, but merely the meaningless following of custom, which is only a disguise for stupidity.

Quotes by Martin Luther King

• "The time is always right to do what is right."
• "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere."
• "Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter."
• "I have decided to stick with love. Hate is too great a burden to bear."
• "Faith is taking the first step even when you don’t see the whole staircase."
• "Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that."
• "Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity."
• "We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope."
• “A right delayed is a right denied.”

Quotes by Nelson Mandela

• “Real leaders must be ready to sacrifice all for the freedom of their people.”
• “A fundamental concern for others in our individual and community lives would go a long way in making the world the better place we so passionately dreamt of.”
• “One of the most difficult things is not to change society — but to change yourself.”
• “To be free is not merely to cast off one’s chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others.”
• “May your choices reflect your hopes, not your fears.”
• “A good head and a good heart are always a formidable combination.”
• “While poverty persists, there is no true freedom.”
• “Action without vision is only passing time, vision without action is merely day dreaming, but vision with action can change the world.”

Quotes by Abdul Kalam

• “If you want to shine like a sun, first burn like a sun.”
• “Let us sacrifice our today so that our children can have a better tomorrow.”
• “Thinking is the capital, an enterprise is a way, and hard work is the solution.”
• “The purpose of education is to make good human beings with skill and expertise... Enlightened human beings can be created by teachers.”