Quotes About Ethics

previous secretary of war, Henry Stimson, memorably put it, "gentlemen do not read each other's mail." One of the few American officials who had promoted intelligence

Blome developed aerosol delivery systems for nerve gas, to be tested on inmates at the Auschwitz concentration camp; bred infected mosquitoes and lice, to be tested on inmates at the Dachau and Buchenwald camps; and produced gas for use in killing thirty-five thousand prisoners at camps in Poland where patients with tuberculosis were being held.

Much of their data was unique because it could come only from experiments in which human beings were made to suffer or die. That made Blome a valuable target—but a target for what? Justice cried out for his punishment. From a U.S. Army base in Maryland, however, came an audaciously contrary idea: instead of hanging Blome, let's hire him.

SHOULD EVERYONE WHO helped run the Nazi machine be prosecuted for war crimes, or could some be brought to work for the U.S. government instead?

Thus did the man responsible for directing the dissection of thousands of living prisoners during wartime, along with those who worked with him, escape punishment. Unlike their German counterparts, however, they were not brought to the United States. Instead the Japanese scientists were installed at laboratories and detention centers in East Asia. There they helped Americans conceive and carry out experiments on human subjects that could not be legally conducted in the United States.

Often the victims were still conscious when their organs were removed, because Ishii believed that the best data could be collected at the point of death.

Despite the clarity of that imperative, and despite the seven death sentences that had been pronounced on Nazi scientists who were judged to have violated it, the Nuremberg Code was never incorporated into United States law.

Americans have always been idealists. They want their country to act for pure motives

Stephen Kinzer

Sergei Nechayev (1847–82), the son of a serf and the founder of the secret society the People's Retaliation, had observed in 1871, "Everything that allows the triumph of the revolution is moral, and everything that stands in its way is immoral.

Their rule is 'Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law.

Lose money for the firm and I will be understanding; lose a shred of reputation for the firm and I will be ruthless. —WARREN BUFFETT

while ethics is fundamentally important and necessary, it is absolutely insufficient. It shows that the so-called soft stuff is hard, measurable, and impacts everything else in relationships, organizations, markets, and societies. Financial success comes from success in the marketplace, and success in the marketplace comes from success in the workplace. The heart and soul of all of this is trust.

while high trust won't necessarily rescue a poor strategy, low trust will almost always derail a good one.

The happy life is regarded as a life in conformity with virtue. It is a life which involves effort and is not spent in amusement." —Aristotle, from The Nicomachean Ethics

SOMEONE ONCE TRIED TO SUMMARIZE A PRINCIPLE IN Aristotle's epic work Poetics with these words: "Action is character." Now Aristotle was describing the elements of drama when he wrote his Poetics, so he didn't necessarily mean what I mean here. Still, his basic premise is true: we know what a person's character is by what he does.

In the Nicomachean Ethics Aristotle said, "Men acquire a particular quality by constantly acting a particular way . . . you become just by performing just actions, temperate by performing temperate actions, brave by performing brave actions.

Art, like morality, consists of drawing the line somewhere.

Physical strength is never what makes a man manly. Rather, it is moral strength that identifies the true man

Men acquire a particular quality by constantly acting a particular way . . . you become just by performing just actions, temperate by performing temperate actions, brave by performing brave actions.

The great Way is easy, yet people prefer the side paths. Be aware when things are out of balance. Stay centered within the Tao. When rich speculators prosper while farmers lose their land; when government officials spend money on weapons instead of cures; when the upper class is extravagant and irresponsible while the poor have nowhere to turn— all this is robbery and chaos. It is not in keeping with the Tao.

One of history's most dangerous games begins with dividing the world into the good guys and the bad guys and ends with using any means necessary to take the villains out.

I believe that there are parts to human nature that cannot be reached by either legislation or education, but require the power of God to deal with.

Consequences are governed by principles, and behavior is governed by values, therefore, value principles!