Michael Heseltine Quotes

Markets work; morals matter.

A free enterprise system that is not underlaid with values is bankrupt.

We believe there should be a huge area between everything you should do and everything you can do without getting into legal trouble. I don't think you should come anywhere near that line. We don't deserve much credit for this. It helps us make more money. I'd like to believe that we'd behave well even if it didn't work. But more often, we've made extra money from doing the right thing. Ben Franklin said I'm not moral because of it's the right thing to do - but because it's the best policy.

One of the most depressing features of the ethical side of the matter is that instead of such methods arousing contempt they are more or less openly admired. And this is logical. Canonise 'business success,' and men who made a success like that of the Standard Oil Trust become national heroes!

I think the greater responsibility, in terms of morality, is where leadership begins.

We need to be clear when we venerate entrepreneurs what we are venerating. They are not moral leaders. If they were moral leaders, they wouldn't be great businessmen.

Whether it's trivial or important, every choice has a moral aspect to it to a certain degree.

Action indeed is the sole medium of expression for ethics.

It is not true that people of high principle are ill-suited for politics.

Socialism errs in thinking it can force sinful humans to be what they are not. Capitalism errs in thinking that putting sin to good use will transform it into virtue.

I have a pretty keen ethical compass.

Knowledge is but an instrument, which the profligate and the flagitious may use as well as the brave and the just.

We've lost our sense of ethics; we live in a world of small-mindedness, of gratification without happiness and actions without meaning.

You might want to think twice before you try to use a man's conscience against him. It may turn out he doesn't have one.

We can assume that most people, most of the time, are moral creatures. But imagine that this morality is like a gearshift that at times gets pushed into neutral. When that happens, morality is disengaged. If the car happens to be on an incline, car and driver move precipitously downhill. It is then the nature of the circumstances that determines outcomes, not the driver's skills or intentions.

True success depends more on character than on intellect.

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.

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

It is always the right time to do the right thing.

As an anonymous participant in financial markets, I never had to weigh the social consequences of my actions ... I felt justified in ignoring them on the grounds that I was playing by the rules.

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

One’s concern with the ethics of means and ends varies inversely with one’s personal interest in the issue.

Without integrity and conscience we lose our freedom.

There is not in all America a more dangerous trait than the deification of mere smartness unaccompanied by any sense of moral responsibility.

We talk so much about one's rights... so little about what is actually right.