Quotes About Ethics

Someone getting rich is doing so at other people's expense

is paid according to some metrics that do not necessarily reflect the health of his company; these he can manipulate, hide risks, get the bonus, then retire

First ethical rule: If you see fraud and do not say fraud, you are a fraud. Just as being nice to the arrogant is no better than being arrogant toward the nice, being accommodating toward anyone committing a nefarious action condones it.

while the lives saved by the drug might not be accounted for anywhere.

I discovered the magic of the camera in reestablishing civil/ethical behavior as follows.

Recall that Fat Tony was in favor of just "making a buck" as opposed to being "proven right.

I don't particularly care about the usual. If you want to get an idea of a friend's temperament, ethics, and personal elegance, you need to look at him under the tests of severe circumstances, not under the regular rosy glow of daily life.

Remember that Socrates was put to death because he would not compromise his standards.

10 million earned through Russian roulette does not have the same value as $10 million earned through the diligent and artful practice of dentistry.

to figure out why ethics, moral obligations, and skills cannot be easily separable in real life, consider the following when you tell someone in a position of responsibility, say your bookkeeper, I trust you. Do you mean that one you trust his ethics?

Thus they become easily prone to manipulation by lobbyists

Stay human, take as much as you can, under the condition that you give more than you take.

it is hard to disentangle ethics on one hand, from knowledge and competence on the other ...

People who are not morally independent tend to fit ethics to their profession, rather than find a profession that fits their ethics.

Selfish courage is not courage. A foolish gambler is not committing an act of courage, especially if he is risking other people's funds or has a family to feed.*4

Success is leading an honorable life. Honor implies that there are some actions you would categorically never do, regardless of the material rewards. It also means that there are things you would do unconditionally, regardless of the consequences.

Compromising is condoning. The only modern dictum I follow is one by George Santayana: A man is morally free when Ã¢â'¬Â¦ he judges the world, and judges other men, with uncompromising sincerity.

The ethical is always more robust than the legal. Over time it is the legal that should converge to the ethical, never the reverse. Hence, laws come and go; ethics stay.

I have always hated employment and the associated dependence on someone else's arbitrary opinion, particularly when much of what's done inside large corporations violates my sense of ethics.

Compendiaria res improbitas, virtusque tarda—the villainous takes the short road, virtue the longer one. In other words, cutting corners is dishonest.

The difference between technology and slavery is that slaves are fully aware that they are not free.

And of course you learn from the errors of others. You may never know what type of person someone is unless they are given opportunities to violate moral or ethical codes.

Salespeople are experts in the art of psychological manipulation, making the client trade, often against his own interest

So, "giving advice" as a sales pitch is fundamentally unethical—selling cannot be deemed advice.