Ethical Standards Quotes

We've become, now, an oligarchy instead of a democracy. I think that's been the worst damage to the basic moral and ethical standards to the American political system that I've ever seen in my life. ~ Jimmy Carter

The question is, why are politicians so eager to be president? What is it about the job that makes it worth revealing, on national television, that you have the ethical standards of a slime-coated piece of industrial waste? ~ Dave Barry

America's highest economic need is higher ethical standards
enforced by strict laws and upheld by responsible business leaders. ~ George W. Bush

The basis of effective government is public confidence, and that confidence is endangered when ethical standards falter or appear to falter. ~ John F. Kennedy

Excellence calls for character ... integrity ... fairness ... honesty ... a determination to do what's right. High ethical standards, across the board. ~ Price Pritchett

I value ethical standards, of course. But in a culture like ours – which devalues or dismisses the reality and power of the inner life – ethics too often becomes an external code of conduct, an objective set of rules we are told to follow, a moral exoskeleton we put on hoping to prop ourselves up. The problem with exoskeletons is simple: we can slip them off as easily as we can don them. ~ Parker J. Palmer

Morality in its noblest forms remains inexplicable unless one takes into account that power of growth in the human soul which has led generation after generation from lower religious and ethical standards to higher ones which often clash with worldly advantages. ~ Ellen Key

The latter-day robber barons are discovering that better conditions and rewards for workers pay off in a world where consumers increasingly demand ethical standards. ~ Clare Short

Some nasty bitch of a woman from the coven of moral and ethical standards tried to fry Rache" the pixy said apparently proud of it. "I pixed the Tink-blasted dildo, and Rache's black-arts boyfriend blew her right out the front door. "Bam! ~ Kim Harrison

Take for example job applications. In the 21st century the decision wherever to hire somebody for a job while increasingly be made by algorithms. We cannot rely on the machines to set the relevant ethical standards, humans will still need to do that, but once we decide on an ethical standard in the job market, that it is wrong to discriminate against blacks or against women for example, we can rely on machines to implement and maintain these standards better than humans. A human manager may know and even agree that is unethical to discriminate against blacks and women but then when a black woman applies for a job the manager subconsciously discriminate against her and decides not to hire her. If we allow a computer to evaluate job applications and program computers to completely ignore race and gender we can be certain that the computer will indeed ignore these factors because computers do not have a subconscious. Of course it won't be easy to write code for evaluating job applications and there is always the danger that the engineers will somehow program their own subconscious biases into the software, yet once we discover such mistakes it would probably be far easier to debug the software than to get rid humans of their racist and misogynist biases. ~ Yuval Noah Harari

Those who lie and cheat, but do not believe what they are doing to be wrong, may be living according to ethical standards. They may believe, for any of a number of possible reasons, that it is right to lie, cheat, steal and so on. They are not living according to conventional ethical standards, but they may be living according to some other ethical standards. ~ Peter Singer

But when we get enough people who don't care, and who don't accept personal responsibility for high ethical standards, our organization gets the "M" disease. Mediocrity. Anybody in the place can be a carrier. By the same token, every individual can carry the cure: the ethics of excellence. ~ Price Pritchett

I think the ethical standards established in this White House have been the highest in the history of the White House. ~ Al Gore

The collective impact of these failures has been a complete erosion of ethical standards, ultimately leading to a novel system we still call Capitalism, but which is tantamount to economic slavery. In this system - our system - the slaves are unaware both of their status and of their masters, who exist in a world apart where the intangible shackles are carefully hidden amongst reams of unreachable legalese. ~ John Doe

I undertake that, in the exercise of my functions of that office I will have regard to any guidance with respect to ethical standards issued by the secretary of state under Section 66 of the Greater London Authority Act 1999. ~ Ken Livingstone

I was raised thinking that moral and ethical standards are universals that apply equally to everyone. And these values aren't easily compatible with the kind of religion that posits a Creator. To my way of thinking, an omnipotent being who sets up a universe in which thinking beings proliferate, grow old, and die (usually in agony, alone, and in fear) is a cosmic sadist. ~ Charles Stross

It is not people who break ethical standards who are regarded as aliens. It is people like me who are isolated. ~ Grigori Perelman

We have emerged from a war in which we had to accept the degradingly low ethical standards of the enemy. But instead of feeling liberated from his standards, and set free to restore the sanctity of human life and the safety of noncombatants, we are in effect making the low standards of the enemy in the last war our own for the present. Thus we are starting toward another war degraded by our own choice. ~ Albert Einstein

What is it to make a moral judgement, or to argue about an ethical issue, or to live according to ethical standards? How do moral judgements differ from other practical judgements? Why do we regard a woman's decision to have an abortion as raising an ethical issue, but not her decision to change her job? What is the difference between a person who lives by ethical standards and one who doesn't? ~ Peter Singer

The industrial revolution has tended to produce everywhere great urban masses that seem to be increasingly careless of ethical standards. ~ Irving Babbitt

Nevertheless, the Holy Spirit brings peace to your mind and heart as you uncover and make the right choice and align yourself with professional, ethical standards. ~ Michael J. Marx

I ask that all Americans demonstrate in their personal and public lives ... the high ethical standards that are essential to good character and to the continued success of our Nation. ~ William J. Clinton

I think Barack Obama has brought a new level of ethical standards to Washington. Has he changed some basic hard-knuckle politics? No. You need hard-knuckle politics to succeed. ~ Ed Rendell

Prudence is not only the first in rank of the virtues political and moral, but she is the director, the regulator, the standard of them all. Metaphysics cannot live without definition; but prudence is cautious how she defines. Our courts cannot be more fearful in suffering fictitious cases to be brought before them for eliciting their determination on a point of law, than prudent moralists are in putting extreme and hazardous cases of conscience upon emergencies not existing. ~ Edmund Burke

On a social level, people have to look after each other, but on an ethical level, each of us has to look after ourselves. If you are a billionaire it is because you have done evil in the world. You have exploited and caused untold misery. You have bent laws and governments to your will. I don't want to shoot him.
I want to strangle him with piano wire. I don't want to escape. I want to be caught and explain my idea to the world. I want to be executed. I now have nothing to lose. We will all be forgotten. But if ten of us manage to kill billionaires those ten will be remembered forever. Our poverty will become history. Wealth is impersonal but we will make it personal again. ~ Jacob Wren

People are too keen to follow standard preconceptions of how organisations should work. All too often, we feel that we are unable to make changes and so hope that someone, somewhere in your organisation knows what we are doing and what the overall aim is. ~ Ricardo Semler

Where defining foreign policy as 'ethical' went wrong was that it implied that all decisions would be exclusive in every respect of any dealings with unethical regimes. ~ William Hague

The United Nations is an uplifting experiment, dedicated to raising the standards of living in Africa , the consciences of democracies, and the price of prostitutes in New York ~ Frank Dane

People who forecast simply because "that's my job," knowing pretty well that their forecast is ineffectual, are not what I would call ethical. What they do is no different from repeating lies simply because "it's my job." ~ Nassim Nicholas Taleb

By modern standards the whole of greater London, including Southwark and Westminster, was small. It stretched only about two miles from north to south and three from east to west, and could be crossed on foot in not much more than an hour. ~ Bill Bryson

I am confident that those who believe in belief are wrong. That is, we no more need to preserve the myth of God in order to preserve a just and stable society than we needed to cling to the Gold Standard to keep our currency sound. It was a useful crutch, but we've outgrown it. Denmark, according to a recent study, is the sanest, healthiest, happiest, most crime-free nation in the world, and by and large the Danes simply ignore the God issue. We should certainly hope that those who believe in belief are wrong, because belief is waning fast, and the props are beginning to buckle. ~ Daniel Dennett

Elsa thinks about how Granny used to say, 'You have standards and I have double standards, and so I win. ~ Fredrik Backman

My confessions are shameless. I confess, but do not repent. The fact is, my confessions are prompted, not by ethical motives, butintellectual. The confessions are to me the interesting records of a self-investigator. ~ W.N.P. Barbellion

Labor is the true standard of value. ~ Abraham Lincoln

When you have the money- and "you" are a big, economically and culturally vital nation- you get more than just a higher standard of living for your citizens. You get power and influence, and a much-enhanced ability to act out. When the money drains out, you can maintain the edge in living standards of your citizens for a considerable time (as long as others are willing to hold your growing debt and pile interest payments on top). But you lose power, especially the power to ignore others, quite quickly, though hopefully, in quiet, nonconfrontational ways.And you lose influence- the ability to have your wishes, ideas, and folkways willingly accepted, eagerly copied, and absorbed into daily life by others. ~ Stephen S. Cohen

Who was Jesus anyway? After twenty centuries, there is not much anyone can agree on. The four canonical gospels don't measure up to modern standards of biographical writing, and - outside of this material - there is precious little contemporary evidence, apart from a few glancing mentions of Jesus or the movement centered on him. ~ Jay Parini

Your ethical muscle grows stronger every time you choose right over wrong. ~ Price Pritchett

Exemplary leaders know that if they want to gain commitment and achieve the highest standards, they must be models of the behavior they expect of others. ~ James M. Kouzes

But, she remembers, you always have to assume that the present is real. It's the only way to remain sane. It's the only way to remain ethical. ~ Sam Hughes

Love does not measure qualities, nor sets any standards. Love happens. ~ Auliq Ice

If you want to really relax sometime, just fall to rock bottom and you'll be a happy man. Most all troubles come from having standards. ~ Thomas Berger

As for "Don't be evil," we have tried to define precisely what it means to be a force for good-always do the right, ethical thing. Ultimately, "Don't be evil" seems the easiest way to summarize it." ~ Sergey Brin

It's tempting to think that decisions that are not life-and-death are therefore unimportant, and that the little compromises we make don't matter to our bottom line or our spiritual selves. How many of us are tempted, in business, to make a less-than-ethical decision? To appropriate someone else's idea or fudge some numbers? We have to remember that maintaining our ethical and spiritual selves is absolutely linked with achieving the degree of success we're working toward. ~ Marianne Williamson

I think higher ed in the U.S. is fairly healthy, and by global standards it dominates, and it makes people more productive. But a lot of our K-12 is a disaster. And the single most important reform would just be to fire the worst ten or 15 percent of teachers in the lot, and we would have massive improvements. ~ Tyler Cowen

Retiring for good wasn't difficult. I knew at the time it was right. I was no longer capable of achieving the standards I'd set myself and there was no light at the end of the tunnel. ~ Ian Botham

Washington has a tendency to hold other powers to standards that it routinely flaunts - plain and simple. ~ Thomas P.M. Barnett

Once you start worrying about a national football championship, then you begin to worry about getting the quality of athlete, and the numbers needed, to win a national championship. And that worry leads to pressure to compromise academic standards to admit those athletes. ~ Derek Bok

I'd like to see people, instead of spending so much time on the ethical problem, get after the problems that really affect the people of this country ~ Richard M. Nixon

What are Christians known for? Outsiders think our moralizing, our condemnations, and our attempts to draw boundaries around everything. Even if these standards are accurate and biblical, they seem to be all we have to offer. And our lives are a poor advertisement for the standards. We have set the gameboard to register lifestyle points; then we are surprised to be trapped by our mistakes. The truth is we have invited the hypocrite image. ~ David Kinnaman

If liberals didn't have double standards, they wouldn't have any standards at all. ~ Burt Prelutsky

The standard four food groups are based on American agricultural lobbies. Why do we have a milk group? Because we have a National Dairy Council. Why do we have a meat group? Because we have an extremely powerful meat lobby. ~ Marion Nestle

The goal of parenting is to create self-sufficient virtues in children. Applying external pressure and punishments tends to teach them fear-based compliance rather than the internalization of moral standards. ~ Stefan Molyneux

There was nothing holy or particular in my skin; I was black because of history and heritage. There was no nobility in falling, in being bound, in living oppressed, and there was no inherent meaning in black blood. Black blood wasn't black; black skin wasn't even black. And now I looked back on my need for a trophy case, on the desire to live by the standards of Saul Bellow, and I felt that this need was not an escape but fear again - fear that "they," the alleged authors and heirs of the universe, were right. And this fear ran so deep that we accepted their standards of civilization and humanity. ~ Ta-Nehisi Coates

The credit which the apparent conformity with recognized scientific standards can gain for seemingly simple but false theories may, as the present instance shows, have grave consequences. ~ Friedrich August Von Hayek

In boot camp, I was warned about the double standards in the Navy. Petty Officer Hunter told us that Navy men were horny animals eager to stick their dicks in something warm and wet. That was socially acceptable. However, females were held at a higher standard. Females serving sea duty was a new concept, only a decade or two old when I enlisted. I was one of the first women allowed on destroyers. Therefore to show our gratitude for being granted one inch towards male equality, we had to work a hundred times harder for a worthy image.
Hunter informed us that we had to work hard to establish a decent reputation at our command. If we acted like a slut, we would be treated like a slut. One slip would permanently brand us. ~ Maggie Young

The appearance of things to the mind is the standard of every action to man. ~ Epictetus