Quotes About Ethics

Of course we're Criminals

Sin in this country has been always said to be rather calculating than impulsive.

The buying of a whole bottle does not require that you drink the whole bottle. Mother's Rule of eating everything on your plate does not apply to alcohol.

A society remains functional as long as too many people aren't corrupt in too many places for too long.

Civilisation is soap".

At the time, BT wasn't yet known as the bank where—according to one infamous derivatives salesman—they "lure people into that calm and then just totally fuck 'em." To most of the world, this was still a secret. I had assumed that BT was in business to make as much money as it could. Had I known BT's approach to clients was to "totally fuck 'em," my favorable view of the bank might have changed. Perhaps it would have improved.

One group of senior directors took an extravagant junket to Uruguay to kill doves. They especially loved killing doves. Why? It couldn't have been the challenge. The group paid a Uruguayan farmer who had thousands of doves on his property to allow them to shoot there. One of the managers told me the air was so thick with doves that the hunting resembled a scene from Alfred Hitchcock's movie The Birds.

while the firm sailed along cautiously, more aggressive banks—especially Salomon Brothers and Goldman, Sachs—began making more money. This was a serious problem for Morgan Stanley. In investment banking, cash conquers all. A bank's goal was to make money, not to preserve its chastity. If Morgan Stanley could outearn rivals by capitalizing on its stellar reputation, fine. But if less-reputed banks were generating more cash, Morgan Stanley was doing something wrong.

From the firm's perspective it was important to make as much money up front as possible on these trades. Take out a big fee, plant the time bomb, walk away, and wait. Of course, after the explosion the derivatives losers would sue, but as long as the firm had made enough money up front and could defend the lawsuit adequately, it would be fine. The important message I took from the disclaimers was this: The way you made money selling derivatives was by trying to blow up your clients.

Killing one person makes you a murderer. Killing a million people makes you a king. Killing them all makes you God.

If Truth is taken away from us, then Right and Wrong are taken from us as well. If we don't know Right and Wrong, then we can't, we won't control ourselves, but will look to someone else to bring order through brute force and raw power. We will be controlled by a tyrant, and we will no longer be free...

When you live in a world that likes bad guys, the bad guys don't go away.

I felt bad, but I did it anyway, because I'm only human. I was ashamed of myself and depressed afterward, though, which is human, too, I guess. Being human is an excuse for just about everything, but it also kind of sucks in a way.

Merkwürdige Rasse, die Menschheit. Flog zum Mond und schändete kleine Kinder.

We are part of nature yet we have decided to be nicer than nature.

I'd remember that if it came down to it, I'd rather be arrested for shoplifting than ever be an evangelical leader again. There was a certain basic and decent honesty about stealing pork chops that selling God had lacked.

Most of the time, I was biting my tongue. If I wanted to be invited back, I couldn't go on the 700 Club and tell people that the host was a lunatic. I couldn't go on Dobson's Focus on the Family and tell the truth: The host was a power-crazed political manipulator cynically abusing his followers. And I couldn't tell my Hollywood producers that they were full of shit when they cast their girlfriends to star in their movie. I wanted the next job!

When lip service to some mysterious deity permits bestiality on Wednesday and absolution on Sunday, cash me out.

Good philosophy must exist, if for no other reason, because bad philosophy needs to be answered.

If there is no objective morality then love is no better than murder.

Unlike so many, we do not peddle the Word of God for profit." —Paul of Tarsus in 2 Corinthians 2:17, NIV

Virtue is not a bad garment, but it requires an imposing figure.

A drug is not bad. A drug is a chemical compound. The problem comes in when people who take drugs treat them like a license to behave like an asshole.

Take the Kama Sutra. How many people died from the Kama Sutra as opposed to the Bible? Who wins?