Quotes About Ethics

The freedom to be cruel is one of journalism's uncontested privileges, and the rendering of subjects as if they were characters in bad novels is one of its widely accepted conventions.

Newspaper stories that were originally written to satisfy our daily hunger for idle and impersonal Schadenfreude—to excite and divert and be forgotten the next week—now take their place among serious sources of information and fact, and are treated as if they themselves were not simply raising the question of what happened and who is good and who is bad. I

He never asked me what I thought, and I never told him what I thought, because in my view that's the way a journalist ought to behave. You ought not to be going around to people volunteering your feelings. That's daily journalism.

Journalists justify their treachery in various ways according to their temperaments. The more pompous talk about freedom of speech and "the public's right to know"; the least talented talk about Art; the seemliest murmur about earning a living.

There is no mercy in trading life for life. And certainly no righteousness. Mercy, once given, cannot be taken back.

No feminist whose concern for women stems from concern for justice in general can ever legitimately allow her only interest to be the advantage of women.

The good lawyer is the great salesman.

Like Robin Hood....Not real, but true.

It's acting, not lying, so I will not be sent to hell for saying these sorts of things.

The futility of action does not absolve one from the failure to act. -

My main point is to show how so-called health values of therapy, hormonal treatment, and surgery have replaced ethical values of choice, freedom, and autonomy; how these same "health" values have diffused critical awareness about the social context in which the problem of transsexualism arises; how more and more moral problems have been reclassified as technical problems

Without moral values, which should begin in Congress, America will lose her roots, her basis, her thesis.

Whatever has been achieved through pressure and violence is unstable, unreliable and incorrect.

A true businessperson should also be a true humanist who understands that he stands to gain the most in a world that is stable for those he deals with, even if they do not fare as well as he does.

Always strive to get what you want, what you need, especially if your intentions are good and nobody gets hurt in the process."

Strive to get what you want, what you need, especially if your intentions are good and nobody gets hurt in the process."

The greatest sacrifice a man can make is the image of his soul.

It is a beggar's pride that he is not a thief

The reputation of a thousand years may be determined by the conduct of one hour.

Deceive the rich and powerful if you will, but don't insult them.

In much of the rest of the world, rich people live in gated communities and drink bottled water. That's increasingly the case in Los Angeles where I come from. So that wealthy people in much of the world are insulated from the consequences of their actions." [ Why Societies Collapse , ABC Local, July 17, 2003]

What we're fighting against isn't an out-and-out vice. It's an overgrown, perverted virtue.

Selling something only to steal it back to sell again is not only dishonest, but highly profitable.

Technologists provide tools that can improve people's lives. But I want to be clear that I don't think technology by itself improves people's lives, since often I'm criticized for being too pro-technology. Unless there's commensurate ethical and moral improvements to go along with it, it's for naught.