Robin Day Quotes

It didn't occur to me to go into something that didn't have an ethical return for me.

Greatness is not manifested by unlimited pragmatism, which places such a high premium on the end justifying any means and any methods.

When morality comes up against profit, it is seldom that profit loses.

At times, morality can be dismissed as a matter of personal conscience, no matter how widespread its acceptance. Ethics, on the other hand, arises from societal or group commitments to principia of behavior.

There are situations which cannot honorably be met by art.

Morality is a private and costly luxury.

At the end of the day, if there are truly ethical considerations, those have to override scientific considerations.

There is nothing politically right that is morally wrong.

You can't do something that is morally vacuous or dysfunctional and then write it off saying, 'It wasn't my film, I was just doing a job in it.'

It may not have the virtuous ring of the golden rule, but the maxim 'never say never' is one of the most important in ethics.

There is no moral precept that does not have something inconvenient about it.

Enhanced interrogation is not to be considered lightly, but the use of enhanced interrogation techniques does not require moral people to abandon their beliefs. Rather, it is precisely during these difficult times that one's beliefs about life, justice and mercy become indispensible.

How do you defend inaction in the face of crisis? How is that defensible for anybody?

People who have been wronged will attempt to right the wrong; they would not be people if they didn't. They can rarely afford to be scrupulous about the means they will use. They will use such means as come to hand. Neither, in the main, will they distinguish one oppressor from another, nor see through to the root principle of their oppression.

I'm leery of legislative solutions to what is morality.

Literature is made upon any occasion that a challenge is put to the legal apparatus by conscience in touch with humanity.

Morality must relate, at some level, to the well-being of conscious creatures. If there are more and less effective ways for us to seek happiness and to avoid misery in this world - and there clearly are - then there are right and wrong answers to questions of morality.

Doing good business - being ethical, being transparent, being caring, implementing values in your business - makes a difference, and you make money at the same time.

The time has come to formulate guidelines for the ethical conduct of scientist, perhaps in the form of a voluntary Hippocratic Oath.

It is a sin not to do what one is capable of doing.

Virtue cannot separate itself from reality without becoming a principle of evil.

My feeling is that the hero has now been defined by phrases like the odious one that we were all raised with - crimes does not pay. Of course it pays, you schmuck. That's not why we don't do it. We don't do it because it is wrong.

The imperative is to define what is right and do it.

I would never sacrifice my individual beliefs as a citizen to my corporate responsibilities.

I don't want to have to compromise my morals in order to make a living.