Elaine Dundy Quotes

I conduct my life with an expectation that people will do the right thing. Yet even with all my experience, I am still surprised when they do not.

We all give ourselves a lot of leeway, but we want consistency from other people.

Equality is the measure of all things, and bad behavior is less bad if everyone indulges in it.

For some strange reason murder has always seemed more respectable than fornication. Few people are shocked when they hear God described as the God of Battles; but what an outcry there would be if anyone spoke of him as the God of Brothels.

There can be no question of holding forth on ethics. I have seen people behave badly with great morality and I note every day that integrity has no need of rules

Considering how bad men are, it is wonderful how well they behave.

Do you know what morals are? Morals are an obedience to rules that people laid down to help you live among them.

Morality is the thing upon which your friends smile, and immorality is the thing upon which they frown

There'd be a lot less scandal if people didn't idealize sin and pose as sinners.

I'm not like a politician that goes around talking about family values. And I can't get fired from being a funny person because I did something that most people are disapproving of. I think people are just obsessed with this morality that people perceive as being the right and wrong way of doing stuff.

We have failed to practise ourselves the kind of behaviour we expect from other people.

How do you prevent people from doing inappropriate things? We can write laws. But at the end of the day, I actually wonder what the board was doing.

There is no such thing as a moral dress. It's people who are moral or immoral.

Since survival is the sine qua non, I now define the "moral behavior" as "behavior that tends toward survival".

If you want to find out how strong a company's ethics are, don't listen to what its people say, watch what they do.

You won't burn in hell. But be nice anyway.

I am only trying to call attention to a fact; the fact that this year, of this month, or, more likely, this very day, we have failed to practice ourselves the kind of behaviour we expect from other people.

Morals - all correct moral laws - derive from the instinct to survive. Moral behavior is survival behavior above the individual level.

How come when it's us, it's an abortion, and when it's a chicken, it's an omelette? Are we so much better than chickens all of a sudden? When did this happen; that we passed chickens in goodness? Name six ways we're better than chickens. See, nobody can do it! You know why? 'Cause chickens are decent people.

They judge lest they be judged.

The great difficulty about keeping the Ten Commandments is that no man can keep them and be a gentleman.

You choose sin. You practice sin.

The very essence of our civilization is that we give a paramount place to morality in all our affairs, public or private.

Don't ask people to do something you wouldn't.

If you ask anyone, what is morality based on? These are the two factors that always come out: One is reciprocity, … a sense of fairness, and the other one is empathy and compassion.