Joseph Conrad Quotes

All ambitions are lawful except those that climb upward on the miseries or credulities of mankind.

I would certainly choose my jobs depending on the actions of the character. I won't do anything that has to do with child abuse or women's abuse.

In politics, the people I most despise are those who have no values.

Let none of us delude himself by supposing that honesty is always the best policy. It is not.

Moral values, and a culture and a religion, maintaining these values are far better than laws and regulations.

Make yourself an example, achieve it, but don't hurt anyone on the way up. I don't think I did that.

But whether it be dream or truth, to do well is what matters. If it be truth, for truth's sake. If not, then to gain friends for the time when we awaken.

Tolerance, openness to argument, openness to self-doubt, willingness to see other people's points of view - these are very liberal and enlightened values that people are right to hold, but we can't allow them to delude us to the point where we can't recognise people who are needlessly perpetrating human misery.

Knowledge without justice ought to be called cunning rather than wisdom.

In civilized life, law floats in a sea of ethics. Each is indispensable to civilization. Without law, we should be at the mercy of the least scrupulous; without ethics, law could not exist.

Sometimes it’s more noble to tell a small lie than to deliver a painful truth.

I think if you don't say something it's lying by omission. I personally think it's immoral.

As I have often said, electrons and gerbils don't cheat. People do.

There is nothing more personal than your values. What you will and won't do to get ahead, the lines you will and won't cross to win, whom you will and won't step on for personal gain, are at the very core of your code of honor. And your code of honor determines your character. And your character is who you are. Behind closed doors. When nobody is watching.

The umbrella that I live under is that you must be truthful with everyone except when to do so would injure them or others.

As W.C. Fields once said: a thing worth having is a thing worth cheating for.

If I have unjustly wrested a plank from a drowning man, I must restore it to him though I drown myself.

We may argue eloquently that 'Honesty is the best Policy' - unfortunately, the moment honesty is adopted for the sake of policy it mysteriously ceases to be honesty.

Wherever moral ambition exists, there right exists. And moral ambition itself must be presumed present in subconsciousness, even when the conscious self seems to reject it, so long as society has resources for bringing it into action; in much the same way that the life-saver presumes life to exist in the drowned man until he has exhausted his resources for recovering respiration.

Being a decent human being will require effort and energy.

Once you have a genuine sense of concern for others, there’s no room for cheating, bullying or exploitation.

The princes who have done great things are the ones who have taken little account of their promises.

You can always cheat an honest man, but it takes more work.

You're never allowed to step on people to get ahead, but you can step over them if they're in your way.

Whenever you find a man who says he does not believe in a real Right and Wrong, you will find the same man going back on this a moment later. He may break his promise to you, but if you try breaking one to him he will be complaining 'It's not fair' before you can say Jack Robinson.