Moral = Relating to differences of right and wrong. A moral man knows right from wrong and choose right. Ethical = Very similar but also related to established standards of conduct in business, etc. An ethical man is ethical in how he conducts his life and his business affairs. The two are quite close in definition.

Ethics and morals seem to be interchangable terms. If one person has high ethics and the other has high morals you have standards that are very similar.

An "Ethical Man" has a job.

An ethical man knows he shouldn't cheat on his wife. A moral man wouldn't. (oops...heard this one on TV)

The two words are used interchangeably but their roots are different. From the "Online Etymology Dictionary": "Moral" comes from Latin moralis, equiv. to mor- (s. of mos) usage, custom. It originally meant what was common usage, or standards set by common agreement. "Ethical" comes from from Latin literature meaning "highest good" (in ethics), from Cicero. The common standard, "moral" may not be the same thing as "the highest good". "Ethical" also has some additional meanings that "moral" doesn't, for example, an ethical professional is one who is true to the precepts of his professional code of conduct.

The difference lies within the individual.

Ethics are based on a code of conduct. Morals are based on various codes of ideology. (Does this make any sense to anyone but me? I tend to confuse people...)

An ethical person considers the context (motive, consequences, urgency) of his actions. A moral person acts in accordance with principles which he may never have examined. Both attempt to live rightly. I think of the first as wise and the second as good. I like best the person with an ethical morality.

I would concur with what sssherri, clearly a 'NCIS' fan, said above. But the terms have become so clouded by modern English usage that they now betray their origins and have no clear distinction. Etymologically, "ethic" comes from the Greek "ethos" (character) which speaks to the spirit of rightness & wrongness and to / within the individual. "Moral" comes from the Latin "mos" (custom) which speaks to behavior and to / within society. These have been clouded by everyday usage. Perhaps to avoid a debate of religion in the workplace, companies have typically adopted a 'Code of Ethics' versus a 'Code of Morals', though the latter would, strictly speaking, be a more appropriate title for describing the acceptable behavior of a group. (Unless, of course, you consider a company to be personified by character, which is, well, weird.) That gets us back to the original point: The ethical man understands should or should not, the moral man does or does not. It's not unlike the relationship between squares and rectangles, if you remeber your geometry!

The ethical man knows right from wrong (his head), while the moral man does right over wrong (his head & heart).

A moral man may be an ethical man but an ethical man may not be a moral man.

Morality is mental, whereas ethicality (if that is a word) is practical. Very similarly, a religious man can be pious, but inwardly, corrupt.

To begin with, ethics and morals are NOT interchangable. However, they are not necessarily mutually exclusive either. Some rules may be moral, or ethical, or both. Moral behavior generally has to do with conforming to rules of behavior found to be acceptable to the cultural population at large. These rules can be quite arbritrary, as they derive from varied sources. These sources can include religious texts, spiritual and cultural leaders, or even the tastes and preferences of those members of the culture who happen to be in positions of power or authority. Ethical behavior generally relates to conforming to rules of fairness and justice. These rules are often discussed and agreed upon, even if only informally, by the parties affected by the rule. As mentioned before, there can be considerable overlap of ethical and moral rules. Some examples: A rule forbidding promiscuity is a moral rule. A rule mandating taxes would be an ethical rule. A rule forbidding theft would be both a moral and ethical rule. Now for a section that is entirely an opinion. It is my opinion that one should strive to live an ethical life and not necessarily a moral one. I say this because most ethical ideas would likely also be moral, whereas the arbitrariness of morality makes it less likely that a moral idea is also ethical. A purely moral lifestyle would lead to behaviors that really only conform to the idea of how someone else believes you should behave, without necessarily any real benefit to anyone and possibly at some harm. As an easy example, exclusion of premarital sex is a common moral but as far as I can tell is of no real benefit to anyone, so long as the actors behave rationally. Another example is that for large parts of human history, racial integration was considered immoral, and it took ethical considerations of equality and fairness to slowly change this idea.

An ethical man knows it's wrong to cheat on his wife the moral man won't cheat on his wife.

We all live by core beliefs - ethics. What we need to do is peel away the layers to get to our ethics. What we actually do - our actions - are borne form societal values and the constraints of the situation in the present. What we say we would do - morals - are what we perceive to be the best option to take before we act. So there are 3 layers - action, morals, ethics - BUT we need to remember that our actions wont necessarily reflect our ethics because of the variables of other people at any given time.

Morals seldom change= They involve right and wrong for the person. Ethics do change- from situation to situation. Professional ethics are different for a lawyer representing a client, as opposed to a lawyers' personal morals. The lawyer's personal morality may cause them to want to strangle the person he/she is representing, but professional ethics require him/her to do his/her job to defend said person to the best of his/her ability.

Ethics and morality are effectively the same thing. Morality is universal, ethics are applications of moral principle in a specific area of action.