Ethical Compromise Quotes

When statesmen forsake their own private conscience for the sake of their public duties, they lead their country by a short route to chaos.

Making the world safe for hypocrisy.

The man must be a prodigy who can retain his manners and morals undepraved by such circumstances... [Slavery]

A man who wishes to make a profession of goodness in everything must necessarily come to grief among so many who are not good. Therefore, it is necessary for a prince, who wishes to maintain himself, to learn how not to be good, and to use this knowledge and not use it according to the necessity of the case.

I consider that the chief dangers which confront the coming century will be religion without the Holy Ghost, Christianity without Christ, forgiveness without repentance, salvation without regeneration, politics without God, and heaven without hell.

The lesser evil is also evil.

A professional politician is a professionally dishonorable man. In order to get anywhere near high office he has to make so many compromises and submit to so many humiliations that he becomes indistinguishable from a streetwalker.

There is no such thing as justice in the abstract; it is merely a compact between men.

Look through the whole histories of countries professing the Romish religion and you will uniformly find the leaven of this besetting and accursed principle of action—that the end will sanction any means.

There is no truth which personal vice will not distort.

Liberation movements - prizing ends over means - are not always particular about their friends or scrupulous about their transactions.

Lindsey Graham can't lead us in any direction because he traded his moral compass for petty political gain.

The principle that the end justifies the means is and remains the only rule of political ethics; anything else is just a vague chatter and melts away between one’s fingers.

But tolerance by itself can be a cover for moral laziness.

Hillary Clinton and Bill Clinton have literally sold everything they have to sell. They have sold their honesty. They've sold their integrity. They've sold America down the river. They have sold everything in order to amass critical personal wealth.

The 'morality of compromise' sounds contradictory. Compromise is usually a sign of weakness, or an admission of defeat. Strong men don't compromise, it is said, and principles should never be compromised.

I don't think one can write from a compromised moral position.

Our politicians have sacrificed their principles on the altar of special interests; our corporate leaders have sacrificed their integrity on the altar of profits; and our media watchdogs have sacrificed the voice of dissent on the altar of audience competition.

Hero­ism breaks its heart, and ide­al­ism its back, on the intran­si­gence of the cred­u­lous and the mediocre, manip­u­lated by the cyn­i­cal and the corrupt.

Occasionally, a man must rise above principles.

A man who sells his conscience for his interest will sell it for his pleasure. A man who will betray his country will betray his friend.

There are indeed, in the present corruption of mankind, many incitements to forsake truth: the need of palliating our own faults and the convenience of imposing on the ignorance or credulity of others so frequently occur; so many immediate evils are

Hypocrisy is an homage that vice renders to virtue.

When a man has so far corrupted and prostituted the chastity of his mind, as to [profess] things he does not believe, he has prepared himself for the commission of every other crime.