Ethics is everything, ... If you don't have a strong moral standing, if you don't have an ethical foundation, you just crumble.

Tom's problem ... is continual acts that border and go sometimes beyond the ethical edge,

Tom's problem isn't just this. It's continual acts that border and go sometimes beyond the ethical edge, ... They may not be illegal, but he's always pushing that ethical edge to the limit.

We got elected basically by saying we would live by a higher moral standard and I don't think recently we have,

The ethical man knows he shouldn’t cheat on his wife, whereas the moral man actually wouldn’t.

[It] is nevertheless better than the theological concept, of deriving morality from a divine, all-perfect will, not merely because we do not intuit this perfection, but can derive it solely from our concepts, of which morality is the foremost one, but because if we do not do this (which, if we did, would be a crude circle in explanation), the concept of his will that is left over to us, the attributes of the desire for glory and domination, bound up with frightful representations of power and vengeance, would have to make a foundation for a system of morals that is directly opposed to morality.