Bruce Schneier Quotes

I think most corporate executives are good honorable honest men and women who do good work.

People should be encouraged by things like awards given for corporate governance practices.

Only the corporation that shirks from the light would have anything to fear from government. About the welfare of such corporations we need not be over-sensitive.

Enron - although an extreme case - is hardly the only company with a hollow set of values.

We demand that big business give the people a square deal; in return we must insist that when anyone engaged in big business honestly endeavors to do right he shall himself be given a square deal.

Our aim is not to do away with corporations; on the contrary, these big aggregations are an inevitable development of modern industrialism …. We are not hostile to them; we are merely determined that they shall be so handled as to subserve the public good. We draw the line against misconduct, not against wealth.

At D.O.J., we don't want to go after the corporate wrongdoers simply as an end unto itself; we want to decrease the amount of corporate wrongdoing that happens in the first place. We want to restore and help protect the corporate culture of responsibility.

They [corporations] feel neither shame, remorse, gratitude, nor goodwill.

I don't feel I'm at liberty to speak about the actions of any one CEO. That's not fair; given CEOs have duties to their shareholders.

Corporate executives and business owners need to realize that there can be no compromise when it comes to ethics, and there are no easy shortcuts to success. Ethics need to be carefully sown into the fabric of their companies.

Shareholder meetings are not usually the occasion for utter candor - or for that matter, arch sarcasm - by chief executives.

'Power Play' is a morality tale for our post-Enron world and - not incidentally - wildly entertaining. Nothing wrong with that.

The future of any corporation is as good as the value system of the leaders and followers in the organization.

How many big businesses don't resort to underhand means?

Businesspeople get a little bit of bad press sometimes. There are a lot of normal and ethical people.

I'm a cynic about corporate democracy and boards.

There's been a sea change in our focus on corporate ethics. We've made more progress in the last three years than the previous 30.

The question is, do corporate executives, provided they stay within the law, have responsibilities in their business activities other than to make as much money for their stockholders as possible? And my answer to that is, no they do not.

Corporations have neither bodies to be punished, nor souls to be condemned; they therefore do as they like.

We have to raise the bar on corporate governance. Shareholders want ethical behavior and honesty.

The importance of supervising the business of great railways and industrial combinations and the necessary investigation and prosecution of unlawful business methods are another necessary tax upon Government which did not exist half a century ago.

If our great corporations would more scrupulously observe their legal limitations and duties, they would have less cause to complain of the unlawful limitations of their rights or of violent interference with their operations.

Let business oversee itself.

The value of an aware is inextricably linked to the character of the organization presenting it.

Every technology company should have a red button somewhere in the headquarters where, if they realize they've caused more societal harm than they expected and done more harm than good, they press the button, and the company dissolves instantly.