Action indeed is the sole medium of expression for ethics.
Interpretation
Ethics can only be expressed through our actions.
This quote by Jane Addams emphasizes the idea that ethical principles are not merely theoretical concepts; they must be demonstrated through our actions. It suggests that mere words are not sufficient to convey our moral beliefs; rather, it is our behavior that truly reflects our ethical values.
In practice
During a philosophy lecture discussing ethical theories, this quote can be introduced to underline the importance of action over words.
I might believe I had unusual talent if I did not know what good music was; I might enjoy half an hour's practice a day if I were busy and happy the rest of the time. You do not know what life means when all the difficulties are removed! I am simply smothered and sickened with advantages. It is like eating a sweet dessert the first thing in the morning.
America's future will be determined by the home and the school. The child becomes largely what he is taught; hence we must watch what we teach, and how we live.
I am not one of those who believe - broadly speaking - that women are better than men. We have not wrecked railroads, nor corrupted legislatures, nor done many unholy things that men have done; but then we must remember that we have not had the chance.
Nothing could be worse than the fear that one had given up too soon, and left one unexpended effort that might have saved the world.
National events determine our ideals, as much as our ideals determine national events.
If the meanest man in the republic is deprived of his rights,then every man in the republic is deprived of his rights.
The paradox of vengefulness is that it makes men dependent upon those who have harmed them, believing that their release from pain will come only when their tormentors suffer.
You can’t crush ideas by suppressing them. You can only crush them by ignoring them. By refusing to think, refusing to change.
What is meaningful cannot in fact be isolated…. We achieve understanding within a circular movement from particular facts to the whole that includes them and back again from the whole thus reached to the particular significant facts.
When God had made The Man, he made him out of stuff that sung all the time and glittered all over. Some angels got jealous and chopped him into millions of pieces, but still he glittered and hummed. So they beat him down to nothing but sparks but each little spark had a shine and a song. So they covered each one over with mud. And the lonesomeness in the sparks make them hunt for one another.
I have a kind of magnetic attraction to situations of violence.
I have here only made a nosegay of culled flowers, and have brought nothing of my own but the thread that tied them together.
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