Quotes About Ethics

T]hat little voice shut up the instant I did something. And not just something: the exact thing I knew to be right. Because if the system was broken, if Carrie Johnstone wasn't going to ever pay consequences for her action, it wasn't because "the system" failed to get her. It was because people like me chose not to act when we could. The system was people, and I was part of it, part of its problems, and I was going to be part of the solution from now on.

Otto von Bismarck quipped, Laws are like sausages, it is better not to see them being made.

We're not making a world without greed, Jacob. We're making a world where greed is a perversion. Where grabbing everything for yourself instead of sharing is like smearing yourself with shit: gross. Wrong. Our winning doesn't mean you don't get to be greedy. It means people will be ashamed for you, will pity you and want to distance themselves from you. You can be as greedy as you want, but no one will admire you for it.

That would be like telling people not to send nudes. It doesn't work.

The worst part was that the Brit's reportage was just spleen-filled editorializing on the lack of ethics in the valley's board-rooms (a favorite subject of hers, which no doubt accounted for his fellow-feeling), and it was also the crux of Kettlewell's schtick. The spectacle of an exec who talked ethics enraged Rat-Toothed more than the vilest baby-killers. He was the kind of revolutionary who liked his firing squads arranged in a circle.

Nothing. But who shuts down a machine with five years uptime? That's like euthanizing your grandmother.

There's more than one way to be smart. People like my dad assume that because they're smart about being evil bastards, they're smart about everything—

People like my dad assume that because they're smart about being evil bastards, they're smart about everything—" "And because they're smart at everything," Seth said, "that makes it okay for them to be evil bastards?

I don't think that the average person is sixty percent good and forty percent prick. I think that the average person sometimes kids himself that he's the center of the universe, and it's okay if he does something that he'd be pissed about if someone else did it to him, and tries not to think about it too hard.

That's the walkaway dilemma. If you take without giving, you're a mooch. If you keep track of everyone else's taking and giving, you're a creep scorekeeper. It's our version of Christian guilt—it's impious to feel good about your piety. You have to want to be good, but not feel good about how good you are. The worst thing is to be worrying about what someone else is doing, because that has nothing to do with whether you're doing right.

most of what I hated about present-day America was stuff I helped to invent.

The right to freedom of association is fine, but why shouldn't the cops be allowed to mine your social network to figure out if you're hanging out with gangbangers and terrorists?

Blowing them up or shooting them wasn't right, but a world in which the wicked went about their days frightened of retribution was a more just one than a world where the wicked held their heads high.

It's our version of Christian guilt—it's impious to feel good about your piety. You have to want to be good, but not feel good about how good you are. The

When I forget to do the dishes, that's because no one's perfect. When you forget to do the dishes, it's because you're a selfish asshole.

The gentleman that succeeded Mr. Endicot was Mr. Richard Bellingham, one who was bred a lawyer, and one who lived beyond eighty, well esteemed for his laudable qualities, but as the Thebans made the statues of their magistrates without hands, importing that they must be no takers;

If I made you from nothing, then maybe I am God, and because I want More, maybe I'm the Devil.

When happiness becomes our standard for judging truth, things that make us happy give us permission to do some things that otherwise would be considered wrong.

It's only pre-marital sex if you plan on getting married.

Ain't nothing wrong with shootin' folks, long as the right ones get shot

Don't say that he's hypocritical Say rather that he's apolitical. Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down? "That's not my department," says Wernher von Braun.

Under Trump, norms were violated so frequently that conflicts of interest became the rule rather than the exception. The thieves and kleptocrats, or their lawyers, really, were in control.

There was nothing illegal, for example, about naturalized American citizens like the Odessa-born billionaire oligarch Len Blavatnik and his businesses contributing millions to Mitch McConnell's GOP Senate Leadership Fund and to the Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee, as he did in 2016.

Sometimes a King has to do terrible things in order to protect those he has sworn to look after. When the stakes are so high, dreadful decisions have to be taken. It is the responsibility of a King to take on that burden, that guilt.