Quotes About Ethics

We can admire Curtis LeMay, respect him, and try to understand his choices. But Hansell is the one we give our hearts to. Why? Because I think he provides us with a model of what it means to be moral in our modern world. We live in an era when new tools and technologies and innovations emerge every day. But the only way those new technologies serve some higher purpose is if a dedicated band of believers insists that they be used to that purpose.

But what actually matters are the hundreds of small things that the powerful do—or don't do—to establish their legitimacy, like sleeping in the bed of an innocent man you just shot accidentally and scattering your belongings around his house.

When people in authority want the rest of us to behave, it matters—first and foremost—how they behave. This is called the "principle

I define a moral action as one that brings advantage to my friends.

It's not about how smart you are. It's about your values.

Uno de los principales motivos por los que un catedrático acepta un sueldo inferior al que podría cobrar en la empresa privada es que la vida universitaria le da la libertad de hacer lo que quiera hacer, lo que considere correcto.

One of the main reasons college professors accept a lower paycheck than they could get in private industry is that university life gives them the freedom to do what they want to do and what they feel is right. Langan has Harvard backwards.

There is nothing about an individual as important as his IQ, except possibly his morals

higher. If everyone on Wall Street behaved like Harry Markopolos, there would be no fraud on Wall Street—but the air would be so thick with suspicion and paranoia that there would also be no Wall Street.1

Even in his discussion of Harvard, it's as if Langan has no conception of the culture and particulars of the institution he's talking about. When you accept a paycheck from these people, it is going to come down to what you want to do and what you feel is right versus what the man says you can do to receive another paycheck. What?

Wealthy people get special insider deals, and if you and I lived in a country where the tax system was so blatantly illegitimate—where nothing seemed fair, and where our voices weren't heard, and where the rules changed from one day to the next—we wouldn't pay our taxes either.

Words belong to the person who wrote them. There are few simpler ethical notions than this one, particularly as society directs more and more energy and resources toward the creation of intellectual property.

where winning cost us so much morally?

Fitzgerald's] latter work represents essentially best qualities of chivalry and decency now too often lacking in the English themselves.

You can't see them, but it's chock full of defunct newspapermen, still spying through keyholes and persuading themselves they're acting in the best interests of democracy.

Another area of the moral and spiritual decline of Christendom is the abandonment of Christian mores. The movement away from Christian moral standards has not meant moving to an alternative humanistic system of moral standards as was anticipated, but moving into a moral vacuum, especially in the areas of eroticism.

Every moment in front of a customer is a gorgeous opportunity to live your values.

You'll never go wrong in doing what is right.

It is decidedly not true that "nice guys finish last," as that highly original American baseball philosopher, Leo Durocher, was alleged to have said.

Success always has a price; success, with integrity, is the real bottom line.

To borrow a simile from the football field, we believe that men must play fair, but that there must be no shirking, and that the success can only come to the player who hits the line hard.

Some men succeed by what they know some by what they do and a few by what they are.

If you want to trust yourself, make decisions that aregrounded in your authentic principles. Don't lie. Don'tcheat. Don't push others down to obtain success.

We now live in a world where murderers and terrorists can cause death and mayhem, and when the time is "right" for them, they convert to normal human values, and become a global icon and saint!