George Soros Quotes

Government is a contrivance of human wisdom to provide for human wants. Men have a right that these wants should be provided for by this wisdom.

Concern for individual well-being is for private citizens .... Princes, who enjoy public possessions, should be concerned with public good.

The legitimate object of government is "to do for the people what needs to be done, but which they cannot, by individual effort, do at all, or do so well, for themselves.

We have to be guided by the interest of society and the development of the state.

That which is selfish is immoral, and that which is unselfish is moral.

Democracy needs a moral compass.

My goal is first of all to promote a public debate about where markets serve the public good and where they don't belong. That's my first goal.

Economics and ethics have little in common.

When we control business in the public interest we are also bound to encourage it in the public interest or it will be a bad thing for everybody and worst of all for those on whose behalf the control is nominally exercised.

Purity of morals [is] the only sure foundation of public happiness in any country.

One’s concern with the ethics of means and ends varies inversely with one’s personal interest in the issue.

The scope of modern government in what it can and ought to accomplish for its people has been widened far beyond the principles laid down by the old "laissez faire" school of political rights, and the widening has met popular approval.

I think with you, that nothing is of more importance for the public weal, than to form and train up youth in wisdom and virtue. Wise and good men are in my opinion, the strength of the state; more so than riches or arms.

Legislative activity is always best based on care for the people.

Markets are imperfect. So you do need regulation, knowing that the regulators are also human.

For science can only ascertain what is, but not what should be, and outside of its domain value judgments of all kinds remain necessary. Religion, on the other hand, deals only with evaluations of human thought and action: it cannot justifiably speak of facts and relationships between facts.

Economics is a theoretical science and as such abstains from any judgement of value. It is not its task to tell people what ends they should aim at. It is a science of the means to be applied for attainment of ends chosen, not, to be sure, a science of the choosing of ends. Ultimate decisions, the valuations and the choosing of ends, are beyond the scope of any science. Science never tells a man how he should act; it merely shows how a man must act if he wants to attain definite ends.

Cowards can never be moral.

One of the most depressing features of the ethical side of the matter is that instead of such methods arousing contempt they are more or less openly admired. And this is logical. Canonise 'business success,' and men who made a success like that of the Standard Oil Trust become national heroes!

It is not my democracy as a person; it is our democracy as a society.

I'm saying we need to be aware of it, and we need to be able to distinguish when political developments are occurring that are contrary to the public interest.

Those who are most moral are farthest from the problem.

Knowing more about the public effects his work will have, the engineer ought to consider himself an "officer of the court" and keep the general interest always in mind.

The content of scientific theory itself offers no moral foundation for the personal conduct of life.

A person may be qualified to do greater good to mankind and become more beneficial to the world, by morality without faith than by faith without morality.