Quotes About Ethics

Capitalism is based on self-interest and self-esteem; it holds integrity and trustworthiness as cardinal virtues and makes them pay off in the marketplace, thus demanding that men survive by means of virtues, not of vices.

Money is the product of virtue, but it will not give you virtue and it will not redeem your vices

She thought of the world's code that worshipped white lies as an act of mercy—she felt a stab of revulsion against that code..

The code of competence is the only system of morality that's on a gold standard.

there can be no justification for a society in which a man is expected to manufacture the weapons for his own murderers.

Virtue is the giving of undeserved.

No action could be lower or more futile than for one person to throw upon another the burden of his abdication of choice.

One can't be punished for being good. One can't be penalized for ability. If that is right, then we'd better start slaughtering one another, because there isn't any right at all in the world!

Any man, who's afraid of hiring the best ability he can find, is a cheat who's in a business where he doesn't belong. To me-the foulest man on earth, more contemptible than a criminal, is the employer who rejects men for being too good. That's what I've always thought and- say, what are you laughing at?

The world is ours, whenever we choose to claim it, by virtue and grace of the fact that ours is the Morality of Life.

All I know is, unselfishness is the only moral principle, said Jessica Pratt, the noblest principle and a sacred duty and much more important than freedom. Unselfishness is the only way to happiness. I would have everybody who refused to be unselfish shot. To put them out of their misery. They can't be happy anyway.

If everybody were compelled to have the proper kind of education, we'd have a better world. If we force people to do good, they will be free to be happy.

If ever the pleasure of one has to be bought by the pain of the other, there better be no trade at all. A trade by which one gains and the other loses is a fraud.

A process of reason is a process of constant choice in answer to the question: True or False? - Right or Wrong?

Charity must be voluntary.

From the first extortion he had accepted, from the first directive he had obeyed, he had given them cause to believe that reality was a thing to be cheated, that one could demand the irrational and someone somehow would provide it.

Who pays for the orgy?

Now I don't see anything evil in a desire to make money. But money is only a means to some end. If a man wants it for a personal purpose—to invest in his industry, to create, to study, to travel, to enjoy luxury—he's completely moral. But the men who place money first go much beyond that. Personal luxury is a limited endeavor. What they want is ostentation: to show, to stun, to entertain, to impress others. They're second-handers.

The code of competence is the only system of morality that's on a gold standard.

He saw the article...which was not an expression of ideas, but a bucket of slime emptied in public—an article that did not contain a single fact, not even an invented one, but poured a stream of sneers and adjectives in which nothing was clear except the filthy malice of denouncing without considering proof necessary.

If you believe that you have the right to force me—use your guns openly. I will not help you to disguise the nature of your action.

ever the pleasure of one has to be bought by the pain of the other, there better be no trade at all. A trade by which one gains and the other loses is a fraud.

Nothing can make it moral to destroy the best.

No principle ever filled anybody's milk bottle