Cory Doctorow Quotes

Whereas economic man maximises, selects the best alternative from among all those available to him, his cousin, administrative man, satisfices, looks for a course of action that is satisfactory or 'good enough'.

The individualism of current economic theory is manifest in the purely self-interested behaviour it generally assumes. It has no real place for fairness, malevolence, and benevolence, nor for the preservation of human life or any other moral concern.

Morality, it could be argued, represents the way that people would like the world to work, wheareas economics represents how it actually does work.

If you take an economics or a political science course, you're taught that humans are supposed to be rational wealth accumulators, each acting as an individual to maximize his own wealth in the market.

If you don't have integrity, you have nothing. You can't buy it.

If you ask anyone, what is morality based on? These are the two factors that always come out: One is reciprocity, … a sense of fairness, and the other one is empathy and compassion.

Accepting evolution does not force us to jettison our morals and ethics, and rejecting evolution does not ensure their constancy.

Morality makes stupid.- Custom represents the experiences of men of earlier times as to what they supposed useful and harmful - but the sense for custom (morality) applies, not to these experiences as such, but to the age, the sanctity, the indiscussability of the custom. And so this feeling is a hindrance to the acquisition of new experiences and the correction of customs: that is to say, morality is a hindrance to the development of new and better customs: it makes stupid.

I've got confidence that most people in America still have a decent sense of manners, propriety, morality.

Nor let us part with justice, like a cheap and common thing, for a small and trifling price.

I was brought up an atheist and have always remained so. But at no time was I led to believe that morality was unimportant or that good and bad did not exist. I believe passionately in the need to distinguish between right and wrong and am somewhat confounded by being told I need God, Jesus or a clergyman to help me to do so.

I doubt not, but from self-evident Propositions, by necessary Consequences, as incontestable as those in Mathematics, the measures of right and wrong might be made out.

Morals were restrictive, but they were grounded on human experience.

I won't lay down my principles for any kind of recognition or any kind of position or trying to be more famous. It's just not in me. I'd rather be a man. And then to have all this crazy stuff on my conscience.

No one can define or measure justice, democracy, security, freedom, truth, or love. No one can define or measure any value. But if no one speaks up for them, if systems aren’t designed to produce them, if we don’t speak about them and point toward their presence or absence, they will cease to exist.

The law is not an end in itself, nor does it provide ends. It is preeminently a means to serve what we think is right.

The characteristic feature of all ethics is to consider human life as a game that can be won or lost and to teach man the means of winning.

Both as to high and low indifferently, men are prepossessed, charmed, fascinated by success; successful crimes are praised very much like virtue itself, and good fortune is not far from occupying the place of the whole cycle of virtues. It must be an atrocious act, a base and hateful deed, which success would not be able to justify.

Right and truth are greater than any power, and all power is limited by right.

You will never win if you don't deal with your work ethically. All that you need to do is to stick to your principles; morals are relative.

Integrity is the light that shines from a disciplined conscience.

I don't care about what brand you are, I'm concerned what type of man you are, what your principles and standards are.

Men do not differ much about what things they will call evils; they differ enormously about what evils they will call excusable.

I do not believe the United States is well served by a policy that says it is OK to be immoral in any way.

But, most important, we must not become as base and treacherous as our enemies.