Quotes About Ethics

The problem, dear professor, is that you wanted someone who could be made intelligent but still be kept in a cage and displayed when necessary to reap the honors you seek. The hitch is that I'm a person.

Money is the consequence of doing the right things.

Acting the moralist serves nothing. Each case is unique.

The problem with making an extrinsic reward the only destination that matters is that some people will choose the quickest route there, even if it means taking the low road. Indeed, most of the scandals and misbehavior that have seemed endemic to modern life involve shortcuts.

This law … defines the limits of competition in the community of life. You may compete to the full extent of your capabilities, but you may not hunt down your competitors or destroy their food or deny them access to food. In other words, you may compete but you may not wage war.

Whenever a Taker couple talk about how wonderful it would be to have a big family, they're reenacting this scene behind the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. They're saying to themselves, 'Of course it's our right to apportion life on this planet as we please. Why stop of four kids or six? We can have fifteen if we like. All we have to do is plow under another few hundres acres of rain forest -- and who cares if a dozen other species disappear as a result?

If there are forty thousand people in an area that can only support thirty thousand, it's no kindness to bring in food from the outside to maintain them at forty thousand. That just guarantees that the famine will continue.

I needed to confess my sin: I was once again having impure thoughts about saving the world.

And if being civilized means anything at all, it should mean you're the leaders of the club, not its only criminals and destroyers.

It is necessary to lie to achieve anything of value. And a skilled liar is nearly impossible to detect.

We make deals with the devil every day, metaphorically.

You should learn from your competitor, but never copy. Copy and you die.

Responsibility educates.

"Do not take a pair of millstones – not even the upper one – as security for a debt, because that would be taking a man's livelihood as security."

"If you lend money to one of my people who is needy, do not be like a money-lender; charge him no interest."

"He who increases his wealth by exorbitant interest amasses it for another, who will be kind to the poor."

"Who lends his money without usury and does not accept a bribe against the innocent,"

Self denial is not a virtue: it is only the effect of prudence on rascality.

Greed is good until it affects someone's Need…

Greed is not a financial issue. It's a heart issue.

Better is a poor man who walks in his integrity than a rich man who is crooked in his ways.

As long as greed is stronger than compassion, there will always be suffering.

I have never understood why it is "greed" to want to keep the money you have earned but to greed to want to take somebody else's money.

"Try not to become a man of success. Rather become a man of value."