Quotes About Integrity

But the problem is not just with accumulated power, but also with those who seek it. As scientist and author David Brin pointedly noted, "It is said that power corrupts, but actually it's more true that power attracts the corruptible.

Cheats prosper until there are enough who bear grudges against them to make sure they do not prosper.

If it is so easy to help people in real need through no fault of their own, and yet we fail to do so, aren't we doing something wrong? At a minimum, I hope this book will persuade you that there is something deeply askew with our widely accepted views about what it is to live a good life.

Whether particular people with the capacity to take an objective point of view actually do take this objective viewpoint into account when they act will depend on the strength of their desire to avoid inconsistency between the way they reason publicly and the way they act.

hypocrisy is the tribute that vice pays to virtue

Those who lie and cheat, but do not believe what they are doing to be wrong, may be living according to ethical standards. They may believe, for any of a number of possible reasons, that it is right to lie, cheat, steal and so on. They are not living according to conventional ethical standards, but they may be living according to some other ethical standards.

The question cannot be dealt with by invoking the simplistic formula: 'The end never justifies the means.' For all but the strictest adherent of an ethic of rules, the end sometimes does justify the means. Most people think that lying is wrong, other things being equal, yet consider it right to lie in order to avoid causing unnecessary offence or embarrassment Ã¢â'¬â€œ

As Brigid Brophy has put it, it remains true that it is cruel to break people's legs, even if the statement is made by someone in the habit of breaking people's arms.

The group called the Chowder Society had only a few rules: they wore evening clothes (because thirty years ago, Sears had rather liked the idea), they never drank too much (and now they were too old for that anyhow), they never asked if any of the stories were true (since even the outright whoppers were in some sense true), and though the stories went around the group in rotation, they never pressured anyone who had temporarily dried up.

We are bombarded with the pellmell religious convictions of footballers, pop-singers, actors playing new parts for old money, politicians and the rest, moral perverts all, masquerading as mixed up souls who get the message in time.

To be trusted is a greater compliment than to be loved. GEORGE MACDONALD

The distinc­tives of the Christian faith cannot be bartered for the blandishments of a fashionable bonhomie.

The testimony of a clear conscience before God is the priceless and unassailable bulwark of the soul.

In the end . . . . . . . Stand where we feel led. Stand straight, stand tall, and try to remember that other folks might be led to stand elsewhere.

If you can go home to someone who loves you, if your children are proud of you, if you can keep your integrity, you've hit the jackpot. You don't need the state to call your number. It's already been called.

There is a moral sturdiness to (hardware store owner) Charley that isn't advertised or boasted about, but is obvious to all who know him and quickly discerned by those who don't. Our country has lately been afflicted with television preachers and pundits who focus on our families while neglecting theirs. How vainglorious these critics seem, how vacuous and shallow they appear when placed alongside a man of Charley's stature.

Owning and maintaining a fraud had a way of gradually demoralizing one.

Don't never participate in no bad scenes, he reminded himself; that was his motto in life.

If practicality and morality are polarized and you must choose, you must do what you think is right, rather than what you think is practical.

The greatest power one human being can exert over others is to control their perceptions of reality, and infringe on the integrity and individuality of their world. This is done in politics, in psychotherapy.

A Gresham's Law: the fakes would undermine the value of the real.

Mercer doesn't have to do anything alien to him. He suffers but at least he isn't required to violate his own identity.

There is no door to God through dope; that is a lie peddled by the unscrupulous.

You know that, Ted. It's the most precious thing we have. Loyalty between us, between protector and serf, between a man and his mistress. Maybe, Benteley said slowly, a person should be loyal to an ideal.