Quotes About Ethics

In science, progress is a fact, in ethics and politics it is a superstition.

Science enables humans to satisfy their needs. It does nothing to change them. They are no different today from what they have always been. There is progress in knowledge, but not in ethics. This s the verdict both of science and history, and the view of every one of the world's religions.

And they drank heavily, partied with great enthusiasm, and relished the drug culture; they moved in and out and slept around, and this was okay because they defined their own morality. They were fighting for the Mexicans and the redwoods, dammit! They had to be good people!

I guess under the right circumstances, a man will do just about anything.

Ethics are determined by what they catch you doing. If you don't get caught, then you haven't violated any ethics.

Like so many, this trial is not about the truth; it's about winning.

God help us, if ever in this great country we turn our heads while people who have not had fair trials are executed…" -Judge Frank Howell Seay

Some of our clients have not been saints, but no lawyer can dictate morals to his client.

What would his friends think? The Honorable Hatlee Beech, federal judge, writing prose like a faggot, extorting money out of innocent people.

I thought they were honest.' 'They are, but they're bankers, remember.

It takes just one, he says over and over. You hear that all the time in this business. One big case, and you can retire. That's one reason lawyers do so many sleazy things, like full-color ads in the yellow pages, and billboards, and placards on city buses, and telephone solicitation. You hold your nose, ignore the stench of what you're doing, ignore the snubs and snobbery of big-firm lawyers, because it takes only one.

And every defendant, regardless of how despicable the person or his crime, is entitled to a lawyer. Most laymen don't understand this and don't care. I don't care either. This is my job.

Murder must be punished, but murder can also be justified.

Do we really want fair trials? No, we do not. We want justice, and quickly. And justice is whatever we deem it to be on a case-by-case basis.

You miss the whole point, Pastor. What I did was wrong, but I couldn't stop myself. Why couldn't I stop myself? Because of what I am. I wasn't born this way. I became a man with a lot of problems, not because of my DNA, but because of what society demanded. Lock ' em up. Punish the hell out of them. And if you make a few monsters along the way, to bad.

if a defense lawyer is caught cheating, he or she gets nailed with sanctions by the court, reprimanded by the state bar association, maybe even indicted. If a prosecutor gets caught cheating, he either gets reelected or elevated to the bench.

How often would I have the chance to see a pretty girl bathing? I could recall no specific prohibition from the church or the Scriptures, though I knew it was wrong. But maybe it wasn't terribly sinful.

If a prosecutor gets caught cheating, he either gets reelected or elevated to the bench. Our system never holds a bad prosecutor accountable.

every company of a certain size must have committed egregious sins to succeed in the cutthroat world of Western capitalism.

Since we can all agree that it's wrong to kill, why do we allow the State to kill?

Deck has reduced the Canons of Ethics to the Big Three: Fight for your client, don't steal, try not to lie.

deal with self-righteous prosecutors who lie, cheat, stonewall, cover up, ignore ethics, and do whatever it takes to get a conviction, even when they know the truth and the truth tells them they are wrong.

I thought you were a lawyer, I said, spreading peanut butter. I'm a human first, then a lawyer. It's possible to be both...

everything, including education and corrections, is fair game for profiteers.