Quotes About Ethics

If he'd been negotiating Obamacare, Lincoln would have made the infamous 'Cornhusker Kickback' deal - $100 million in Medicaid funds for Nebraska to secure a Senator's vote - in a heartbeat, even if the press howled as it did when Barack Obama agreed to it, forcing its cancellation.

If you talk about your personal life to the press, you can't be mad at them when they start talking about you, because you invited them in.

We're not really under pressure to deliver a cloned baby to this world. What we are under pressure to do is to deliver a cloned baby that is a healthy one.

For me, the moral difficulties lie in the continual pressure brought to bear on my friends and immediate family, pressure which is not directed against me personally but which at the same time is all around me.

If we intensify our efforts we can have a cloned baby within a year or two, but I don't know whether we can intensify our efforts to that extent. We're not really under pressure to deliver a cloned baby to this world. What we are under pressure to do is to deliver a cloned baby that is a healthy one.

The pressures to get the story first, if wrong, are greater sometimes than the pressures to get the story right, if late.

He who is honest in his dealings simply because of the social prestige and position it secures will never develop his higher nature, but will always live along the lower lines.

People are entitled to the presumption of innocence.

I always like to do the things that I think are right. I am not trying to be a model, I am trying to be myself and do the right things. If what I am doing is a model, or is an example, is the right example, I am very happy, but I don't pretend that.

You can't go around hoping that most people have sterling moral characters. The most you can hope for is that people will pretend that they do.

Don't pretend to be a journalist if you're not a journalist.

I wouldn't pretend to tell you we don't pay our lawyers well.

Before I was known, I would go on stage and pretend I was other people. Once I pretended I was mentally handicapped. It was really wrong. One time I was a bad magician. And one time I pretended I was a Christian comic.

People have extreme beliefs about whether it is right for humans to tamper with embryos in any way at all. Sometimes the values discussion gets conflated with the science discussion. We shouldn't pretend we're having an argument about science when we're having an argument about values.

Full disclosure: James Comey is a friend. I won't pretend to neutrality about him. He is a highly honorable and decent person, and I have no doubt that he made the many judgments for which people loathe him in good faith.

Here's the acid test for appropriateness: Pretend that someone near and dear to you is witnessing what you are writing or sending, or knows what you are thinking about sending. If, say, your partner saw this behavior, how would he or she feel? That you are asking yourself this question could mean that you shouldn't be doing it!

In the West, they have morality. We pretend to be moral people but we are not. We do not have a moral code.

In the Premier League, they don't give a foul even when it is a foul. We can't dive or pretend things.

I don't do interviews under false pretenses.

Once you are dancing with the devil, the prettiest capers won't help you.

I think what's going on with gorillas is pretty bad. The fact is that you can buy gorilla meat in London any day you want it.

The thing for me about Ayn Rand is that her philosophy is the only one applicable to the world today - in every sense. If you take her ideas, then take them farther in your own mind, you can find answers to pretty well everything on an individual basis.

In my own life, I'm pretty good at choosing between good and bad. It's the choices between good and good I find the most difficult to make.

If you could train an AI to be a Buddhist, it would probably be pretty good.