Sydney J. Harris Quotes

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.

I hear you reproach, "But delay was best, For their end was a crime." Oh, a crime will do As well, I reply, to serve for a test As a virtue golden through and through, Sufficient to vindicate itself And prove its worth at a moment's view! . . . . . . Let a man contend to the uttermost For his life's set prize, be it what it will! The counter our lovers staked was lost As surely as if it were lawful coin; And the sin I impute to each frustrate ghost Is-the unlit lamp and the ungirt loin, Though the end in sight was a vice, I say.

To do a great right do a little wrong.

He [William Gladstone] made his conscience not his guide but his accomplice.

The human mind has infinite capacity to rationalize, and evil characters just push that boundary a bit. Whatever they're doing, they think it makes sense to do it, and they think they have a good reason to do it. In short, they feel justified.

We did what our people do all the time, we told ourselves something we did was right and we found a way to justify it, even though we knew it was wrong.

Thus does a 'necessary evil' become an idol. Maybe we're stuck with it. But do we have to worship it?

It was like either: (A) I was a terrible guy who was knowingly doing this rotten thing over and over, or (B) it wasn’t so rotten, really, just normal, and the way to confirm it was normal was to keep doing it, over and over.

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

When you choose the lesser of two evils, always remember that it is still an evil.

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.

No doubt, corporate CEOs who lie to their shareholders and politicians who lie to their public know and believe intellectually that lying is immoral. Why then do they lie? They lie to others because they first lie to themselves.

Do not be too moral. You may cheat yourself out of much life so.

People will justify whatever for a good cause.

Necessity makes an honest man a knave.

One of the things I liked about playing Tony Gates in 'Line of Duty' was that I don't think he gave much thought to justifying his actions until he was under investigation.

Evil, when we are in its power, is not felt as evil, but as a necessity, even a duty.

A little hypocrisy is better than losing.

I wanted to write a book about people who have the best intentions and think - really, truly think - that they're doing the right thing. And then they realize that when those ideals come knocking at their windowsill, a lot of times they will suddenly disavow those ideals.

In any compromise between food and poison, it is only death that can win. In any compromise between good and evil, it is only evil that can profit.

There are times when the end justifies the means. But when you build an argument based on a whole series of such times, you may find that you've constructed an entire philosophy of evil." --Luke Skywalker

Every man's conscience is vile and depraved / You cannot depend on it to be your guide when it’s you who must keep it satisfied.

The difficulty is to know conscience from self-interest.

There isn't a definite right and wrong anyway. Sometimes we do what seems wrong, but we have good reasons for doing it, so it's not wrong after all.

It might or might not be right to kill, but sometimes it is necessary.