Frank Abagnale Quotes

I have tended to speak out on the issues that are in the purview of my professional expertise - business ethics, corporate ethics, and government ethics.

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.

Business ethics has always had problems that are distinct from those of other professions, such as medicine, law, engineering, dentistry, or nursing.

They have a crystalline sense of right and wrong; it disappears when they walk out the door with their M.B.A.

If you pretend that business is beyond morality, that's the kind of morality you get.

The low level which commercial morality has reached in America is deplorable. We have humble God fearing Christian men among us who will stoop to do things for a million dollars that they ought not to be willing to do for less than 2 millions.

The right moral compass is trying hard to think about what customers want.

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.

Business executives need to start by spelling out and communicating their values. Then they need to lead by example. This means getting rid of the bad apples and declining opportunities that bring instant wealth at the cost of selling one's soul.

History has shown that one cannot legislate a culture of integrity. And yet, one of the paramount responsibilities and challenges of corporate leadership is to ensure such a culture.

All politics is an extension of ethics ... We cannot leave out conscience at the caucus room door.

If partnering with Facebook meant that we had to change our values, we wouldn't have done it.

But the culture has failed, almost entirely, in inculcating internal controls on actions that have their origin in authority. For this reason, the latter constitutes a far greater danger to human survival.

The unhappy theory of business ethics is this: you have a fiduciary responsibility to maximize profit. Period. To do anything other than that is to cheat your investors. And in a competitive world, you don't have much wiggle room here.

Corporate leaders surely have their problems, I believe that most CEOs are doing their best to hew to the ethical line. The problem is that that line has gotten blurred and that our moral standard seems to be "if everybody else is doing it, it's okay". That's not good enough for me.

It's time for our business and political leaders to help redefine morality beyond sex, drugs, and rock and roll to include lying, hypocrisy, and callous indifference to those in need.

Companies and leaders are role models - not just with the business community - but in the broader world.

Divorced from ethics, leadership is reduced to management and politics to mere technique.

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

Being that I was raised in the Catholic faith, I am very careful about what I choose. I've turned down a lot of projects that... could have helped me a lot financially, and I've quit shows because of where they were going and because I feel like I have to be a role model for my kids.

Ethical is 'I'll wait and do what's right even in the hardest times and even if I have to give up gains to do it.'

We need to have business leaders who live by deep, strong principles.

Interest in business ethics courses has surged, and student activities at leading business schools are more focused than ever before on making business serve long-term social values.

Action indeed is the sole medium of expression for ethics.

Computer programmers, biotechnologists, environmental scientists, neuroscientists, nanotech engineers - all of these fields, and more, should have at least a course in ethics as part of their degree requirements.