The sixth step of the Eightfold Path is Right Effort, meaning to abstain from all evil states of mind and to foster and maintain virtuous states of mind: compassion, pity, sympathy, calmness and tranquility - http://www.amidabuddha.org/news/01May2007.html
The essence of all ethics is to be clear - to be lucid - Albert Camus
Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants. We know more about war than we do about peace, more about killing than we know about living - Omar N. Bradley
It was only when I lay there on rotting prison straw that I sensed within myself the first stirrings of good. Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes,nor between political parties either, but right through every human heart, and through all human hearts. This line shifts. Inside us, it oscillates with the years. Even within hearts overwhelmed by evil, one small bridgehead of good is retained; and even in the best of all hearts, there remains a small corner of evil - Alexander Solzhenitsyn
Grub first, then ethics - Bertolt Brecht
A man's ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death - John Dewey
Global poverty reduction needs broad support across civil society as much as grand goal-setting, via an international social norm that sees the persistence of extreme poverty in as morally unacceptable.
Neuroscientists are beginning to explore techniques that could erase bad memories from our minds.