Quotes About Ethics

You spend the first half of your career going after the bad guys and then the second half representing them.

Your priority is to sell, sell, sell OxyContin.

It was not just OxyContin that was problematic, Berman continued, but Arthur's legacy as well. "The Sackler name is a problem, whether it's the Arthur Sackler name, or all the Sackler names," he said.

If you lose a fortune, you can always earn another, he pointed out. But if you lose your good name, you can never get it back.

As the negative publicity continued to swirl around OxyContin, Richard Sackler was privately seething. "The whole thing is a sham," a sympathetic friend reassured him. If people die because they abuse the drug, "then good riddance.

But the truth was, Arthur had helped Frohlich set up his business, staking him money, sending him clients, and, ultimately, colluding with him in secret to divvy up the pharmaceutical business.

The marketing of OxyContin relied on an empirical circularity: the company convinced doctors of the drug's safety with literature that had been produced by doctors who were paid, or funded, by the company.

His name was Arthur Sackler. He was Morty and Ray's older brother. All three of them were physicians;

A hedge fund, Hildene Capital Management, which had invested some of the family's wealth, said that it was no longer comfortable doing business with the Sacklers. Brett Jefferson, the fund's manager, revealed that someone close to the firm had suffered an "opioid-related tragedy," and said, "My conscience led me to terminate the relationship." Even Purdue's banker, JPMorgan Chase, cut ties with the company.

the very government officials whose job it was to regulate the company and hold it to account ended up seduced by a new job at the company itself.

It wasn't just the implicit threat that rankled Maura Healey. It was the fact that the Sacklers were playing a shell game: they were throwing their lot in with Purdue when it suited them to do so and distancing themselves from the company when it didn't.

And heroin was a street drug, sold out of the back of a car by anonymous young Mexicans of uncertain immigration status, whereas OxyContin had been approved by no less an authority than the Food and Drug Administration. The Sacklers were legitimate businesspeople, pillars of American society. Even after the felony conviction for Purdue, as controversy continued to swirl around OxyContin, Richard Sackler served on the advisory board of the Yale Cancer Center.

against the Sacklers were twisting the facts to scapegoat her clients, she argued. What was their crime? All they had done was sell a drug that was perfectly legal—a product

The PR man dissembled. But to anyone who was paying attention, the answer was clear: by buying all those reprints, Pfizer was bribing Henry Welch.

Once those figures get out, they'll murder these fellows," one senator exclaimed, referring to Welch and Martí-Ibáñez.

How about this?' Simmon asked me. "Which is worse, stealing a pie or killing Ambrose?" I gave it a moment's hard thought. "A meat pie, or a fruit pie?

I also felt guilty about the three pens I'd stolen, but only for a second. And since there was no convenient way to give them back, I stole a bottle of ink before I left.

I can't count the men who have tried to seduce me away from my virtue by teaching me how to defend it.

Just because I tread heavily on propriety's toes doesn't mean I can't play the game when it's of use to me.

Oh yes. It was well worth it, doing things the proper way.

If you sell me a horse that throws a shoe, or starts to limp, or spooks at shadows, I will miss a valuable opportunity. A quite unrecoverable opportunity. If that happens, I will not come back and demand a refund. I will not petition the constable. I will walk back to Imre this very night and set fire to your house. Then, when you run out the front door in your nightshirt and stockle-cap, I will kill you, cook you, and eat you. Right there on your lawn while all your neighbors watch.

When do you bleed a patient?" The question brought me up short. "When I want him to die?" I asked dubiously.

I smiled back at him and for a second I almost felt guilty about how I'd written the receipt. I also felt guilty about the three pens I'd stolen, but only for a second. And since there was no convenient way to give them back, I stole a bottle of ink before I left.

Wrong things never lead to success. If a man acts wrongly and succeeds, that is not the way. Without the Lethani there is no true success.