David Fincher Quotes

Leaders must understand that some people will inevitably sell out to the evil side. Don't waste your time wondering why; spend your time discovering who.

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.'

An ethical action, like an unethical action, is usually analyzed by politicians purely in pragmatic terms.

It's easy to get into the grey zone [of ethics].

You people with hearts,' he said once, 'have something to guide you, and need never do wrong; but I have no heart, and so I must be very careful.

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.

Guilt agonizes over trifles, ignores habitual wrongdoing.

I do feel a responsibility to address things that are problematic, but I don't have to go out of my way to do that.

If it comes down to your ethics vs. a job, choose ethics. You can always find another job.

My biggest problem with modernity may lie in the growing separation of the ethical and the legal

The danger inherent in all force grows stronger when it is likely to gain success, for then it becomes temptation.

Humanity is lost because people have abandoned using their conscience as their compass.

You have to help another person. But it's not right to play God with masses of people. To be God you have to know what you're doing. And to do any good at all, just believing you're right and your motives are good isn't enough.

A man can go along obeying all the rules and then it don't matter a damn anymore.

Most thoughtful people would agree that morality in the absence of policing is somehow more truly moral than the kind of false morality that vanishes as soon as the police go on strike or the spy camera is switched off, whether the spy camera is a real one monitored in the police station or an imaginary one in heaven.

The Department of Justice is committed to asking one central question of everything we do: What is the right thing to do? Now that can produce debate, and I want it to be spirited debate. I want the lawyers of America to be able to call me and tell me: Janet, have you lost your mind?

You're more than Dauntless," he says in a low voice. "But if you want to be just like them, hurling yourself into ridiculous situations for no reason and retaliating against your enemies without any regard for what's ethical, go right ahead. I thought you were better than that, but maybe I was wrong.

I spend a lot of time trying to not do anything bad to anyone, but you can't live your life and not hurt people.

We've all made bad decisions, but they haven't always been resulting in the deaths of innocent people.

I felt I had a responsibility to do the right thing. And then I wanted to do the right thing by my family and there was no handbook.

A good conscience is never lawless in the worst regulated state, and will provide those laws for itself which the neglect of legislators had forgotten to supply.

Conscience represents a fetich to which good people sacrifice their own happiness, bad people their neighbors'.

...Next time you're faced with a choice, do the right thing. It hurts everyone less in the long run.

Do what you know is right, but try not to get caught.

Most people don't have any association in their minds with what they do and with ethics. They think they somehow moved past the questions of morality or values or ethics, and that's something that I've never imagined to be true.