Responsibility Quotes

Business Ethics Quotes

There are truths on this side of the Pyrenees which are falsehoods on the other

Michel de Montaigne 1533-1592, French essayist

It is a commonplace executive observation that businesses exist to make money, and the observation is usually allowed to go unchallenged. It is, however, a very limited statement about the purposes of business

Daniel Katz and Robert L. Kahn in The Social Psychology of Organizations (1966)

It is easy to dodge our responsibilities, but we cannot dodge the consequences of dodging our responsibilities

Josiah Charles Stamp 1880-1941, English Economist and President of the Bank of England

We may pretend that we are basically moral people who make mistakes, but the whole of history proves otherwise

Terry Hands 1941-, British theatre and opera director

The market has no morality

Michael Heseltine 1933-, British conservative politician

Ethics is not definable, is not implementable, because it is not conscious; it involves not only our thinking, but also our feeling

Valdemar W. Setzer, Brazilian anthropologist

Being good is good business

Anita Roddick 1942-, British founder of The Body Shop

The advantages of having decisions made by groups are often lost because of powerful psychological pressures that arise when the members work closely together, share the same set of values and, above all, face a crisis situation that puts everyone under intense stress

Irving L. Janis, behavioral scientist, in Groupthink: The Desperate Drive for Consensus at Any Cost (1971)

If ethics are poor at the top, that behavior is copied down through the organization

Robert Noyce, inventor of the silicon chip

The time is always right to do what is right

Martin Luther King 1929-1968, American leader of civil rights movement and Nobel Peace Prize winner