Cathy O'Neil Quotes

I think ethics is always there; it's not always a very thoughtful or reflective ethics.

There's less of a connection for a lot of people between the technical decisions we make and the ethical ramifications we are responsible for.

This is a global fight to get the right people in the right place and we're talking about people with PhDs in engineering, computer science, mathematics.

Younger scientists are extremely sensitive to the moral implications of all they do.

No code of ethics and no effort are justifiable a priori in the face of the cruel mathematics that command our condition.

I have never obtained any ethical values from my scientific work.

Should I be the one to play God? We're both about the same age, but we grew up in different neighborhoods.

The selective voluntary blindness of human beings allows them to ignore the moral consequences of their choices. It has been one of the species' most valuable traits, in terms of the survival of any particular human community.

The market has no morality

As therefore the state of man now is, what wisdom can there be to choose, what continence to forbear, without the knowledge of good and evil?

… you were so worried about legal and illegal that you never stopped to think about whether it was right or wrong.

The proper role of humanists is not to bring 'human values' to the attention of technicians otherwise engaged in a purely instrumental approach to their calling, but to demand the restoration of the practical or moral element in callings that have degenerated into techniques.

The professional guts a book through - in full knowledge that what he is doing is not very good. Not to work is to exhibit a failure of nerve.

It is interesting to see how humans would act if they knew there were never any consequences for their actions because the next day they could wake up and just redo it.

Education must have two foundations --morality as a support for virtue, prudence as a defense for self against the vices of others. By letting the balance incline to the side of morality, you only make dupes or martyrs; by letting it incline to the other, you make calculating egoists.

I still believe that man, not having been given the power of creation, does not posses the right of destroying the meanest creature that lives. The perogative of destruction belongs solely to the Creator of all that lives.

I don't think there is a particular responsibility on designers that is not on other professions... I think there's a responsibility for all of us to engage on all levels.

I think "immoral" is probably the wrong word to use...I prefer the word "unethical."

The right to do something doesn't mean it's the right thing to do.

Just how destructive does a culinary preference have to be before we decide to eat something else? If contributing to the suffering of billions of animals that live miserable lives and (quite often) die in horrific ways isn't motivating, what would be? If being the number one contributor to the most serious threat facing the planet (global warming) isn't enough, what is? And if you are tempted to put off these questions of conscience, to say not now, then when?

Besides reasoning about matters of fact, men also make moral judgements.

There are occasions when it is undoubtedly better to incur loss than to make gain.

Nowhere is wisdom more necessary than in the guidance of charitable impulses. Meaning well is only half our duty; Thinking right is the other, and equally important, half.

Conscience is wiser than science.

If the vast and the spiritual are omitted, so are the practical and the moral.