Quotes About Ethics

Nobody is more dangerous than he who imagines himself pure in heart; for his purity, by definition, is unassailable.

Precisely at the point when you begin to develop a conscience you must find yourself at war with your society.

A civilization is not destroyed by wicked people; it is not necessary that people be wicked but only that they be spineless.

No one is more dangerous than he who imagines himself pure in heart: for his purity, by definition, is unassailable.

I want to be an honest man and a good writer.

The moral authority in the Western world is gone. And it is gone forever. It is gone, not because of the criminal record--everybody's record is criminal. It is gone because you cannot do one thing and pretend you're doing another! None of us, who are sitting around in some of the true limbo out-of-space, which we call now, waiting to be saved, civilized, or discovered, have the moral authority to say anything.

Yet one must also recognize that morality is based on ideas and that all ideas are dangerous—dangerous because ideas can only lead to action and where the action leads no man can say.

consider that I have many responsibilities, but none greater than this: to last, as Hemingway says, and get my work done. I want to be an honest man and a good writer.

quoted Djuna Barnes: "Too great a sense of identity makes a man feel he can do no wrong. And too little does the same.

civilization is not destroyed by wicked people; it is not necessary that people be wicked but only that they be spineless.

That the world calls morality is nothing but the dream of safety. That's how the world gets to be so fucking moral. The only way to know that you are safe is to see somebody else in danger-otherwise you can't be sure if you're safe.

It is the innocence which constitutes the crime.

It is not permissible that the authors of devastation should be innocent. It is the innocence which constitutes the crime.

Whoever debases others is debasing himself. That

What others did was their responsibility, for which they would answer when the judgment trumpet sounded. But what I did was my responsibility, and I would have to answer too

And I also think, if you would steal from her, then of course you would lie to me, neither of us means anything to you; perhaps, in your eyes, we are simply luckier gangsters in a world which is run by gangsters.

There have been superficial changes, with results at best ambiguous and, at worst, disastrous. Morally, there has been no change at all and the moral change is the only real one.

It matters not how a man dies, but how he lives. The act of dying is not of importance, it lasts so short a time.

The point is not what core values you have, but that you have core values at all, that you know what they are, that you build them explicitly into the organization, and that you preserve them over time.

A company should not change its core values in response to market changes; rather, it should change markets, if necessary, to remain true to its core values.

One of the greatest of human follies is that we think we know ourselves so well, that we know how we would act under any conditions, that we would under any circumstance 'do the right thing.' Well, as many have discovered, you don't really know what you'll do in the dark till the lights go out.

You do not tell people to go fuck themselves and then later when you're in trouble ask them to help you.

Just because it's a world of thieves out there don't mean there ain't no rules to it.

When you make a deal you stick to it. Rock-hard rule. You don't renege, you don't sell out. You hold up your end and expect the other party to do the same. If the other party doesn't, you're entitled to deal with every man of it as you see fit in order to set things right. No--you're more than entitled. You're obligated. Or the rule would mean nothing.