Dan Ariely Quotes

Two wrongs don't make a right, but they make a good excuse.

Desperate? That can be a justification for all kinds of behavior.

When you're a liar, a person of low moral fortitude, really any explanation you need to be true can be true. Especially if you're smart enough. You can figure out a way to justify anything.

At times we used questionable means to achieve our noble ends.

Once we assuage our conscience by calling something a "necessary evil", it begins to look more and more necessary and less and less evil.

And oftentimes excusing of a fault doth make the fault the worse by the excuse.

I. Hate. Excuses. Excuses are a disease.

Once you start lying, you get kind of comfortable. You start believing it. Especially if you truly believe you didn't really cheat because you were doing what everybody else was doing.

I'm not the kind of person that would step on people just to get where I wanted to be, but I have crossed moral boundaries when I've either been afraid or desperate.

I have always had a lot more trouble with my truths than with my deceits.

It's okay to lie as long as you reach a higher truth doing it.

Politics is dirty, and I don't like to talk about dirty things... My conscience is clear.

To do a great right do a little wrong.

Be honest with yourself and lie to everyone else.

Dishonesty is all about the small acts we can take and then think, 'No, this not real cheating.' So if you think that the main mechanism is rationalization, then what you come up with, and that's what we find, is that we're basically trying to balance feeling good about ourselves.

People go down bad paths and they make bad decisions, but it's always justified in their head.

The first sign of corruption in a society ... is that the ends justify the means.

When you're on the side of the angels, it's easier to stretch the truth.

President Nixon's motto was, if two wrongs don't make a right, try three.

The ends do not always justify the means

Perpetrators absolve their harmful behavior as serving worthy causes.

Man can and does rationalize his sins. He finds reasons for all his weakness, invents excuses that first calm and then deaden his conscience. He blames God, society, education, and environment for his wrong doing.

Human beings will justify anything.

I never think the ends justify the means.

Very rarely do people make big compromises with their integrity. Almost every compromise is a small one that is easily justified. The downhill slide is usually a result of many little compromises.