Clarence Darrow Quotes

The more moral the people are in their business dealings, the less paperwork you need, the more handshakes you can have, the more the wheels of capitalism work better because there's trust in the marketplace. Business ethics is not a joke. And, in fact, I think most businesses that I've dealt with encourage exactly that type of behavior.

A company is not accountable just to its owners, but to its workers and its customers.

It is a sort of great Victorian truth that actually, trying to do the right thing is pretty good for you and pretty good for business as well, by and large.

I made it real clear to the business community - if your plan for innovation is to trick people, is to fool them, is not to tell them the truth about the price, then you're right: I'm going to be right in the way.

Let’s put common decency ahead of corporate profits.

Business rests squarely on the law of service. It has for its main reliance truth and faith and justice …. It is one of the greatest contributing forces to the moral and spiritual enhancement of the race.

I have been offered the highest paid contracts in the world. I refused them all. It's not my thing. I don't want to cheat people. And there are certain people I am allergic to. I even intervene when I don't like a customer; I rush in and check all the names. If I don't like them, I don't take them.

We believe there should be a huge area between everything you should do and everything you can do without getting into legal trouble. I don't think you should come anywhere near that line. We don't deserve much credit for this. It helps us make more money. I'd like to believe that we'd behave well even if it didn't work. But more often, we've made extra money from doing the right thing. Ben Franklin said I'm not moral because of it's the right thing to do - but because it's the best policy.

Nothing is quite honest that is not commercial, but not everything commercial is honest.

If you're going to be a great guide to what's great for consumers, and, indirectly, for investors, you've got to be very careful about who you contract with and what you're offering.

Regulation - which is based on force and fear - undermines the moral base of business dealings. It becomes cheaper to bribe a building inspector than to meet his standards of construction. Protection of the consumer by regulation is thus illusory.

Excellence and competitiveness aren't incompatible with honesty and integrity.

I want to send a clear message to every board room, every executive suite across America, if you scam your customers, exploit your many employees, pollute our environment, or rip off taxpayers, we will find ways to hold you accountable.

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

Success surely comes with conscience in the long run, other things being equal. Capacity and fidelity are commercially profitable qualities.

Ninety-nine per cent of what we say is about values. I firmly believe that ethical capitalism is the best way of changing society for the better.

To learn the worth of a man's religion, do business with him.

We don't think of ourselves as do-gooders or altruists. It's just that somehow we're trying our best to be run with some sense of moral compass even in a business environment that is growing.

I don't trust a man who talks about ethics when he is picking my pocket. But if he is acting in his own self-interest and says so, I have usually been able to work out some way to do business with him.

I think it is completely immoral for a shop to trade in the middle of a community, to take money and make profits from that community and then ignore the existence of that community, its needs and problems.

I don't know how to sell out. If I tried to sell out I don't think I could.

Business men are to be pitied who do not recognize the fact that the largest side of their secular business is benevolence. ... No man ever manages a legitimate business in this life without doing indirectly far more for other men than he is trying to do for himself.

As to the meaning of "corporate social responsibility," Friedman and I would agree: If a certain action improves the corporation's bottom line, there's no point in labeling it "socially responsible." It's just good business.

Whoever coined the term "Buyer Beware" was probably bleeding from the asshole.

The sound rule in busi­ness is that you may give money freely when you have a sur­plus, but your name never-nei­ther as en­dorser nor as mem­ber of a cor­po­ra­tion with in­di­vid­ual li­a­bil­ity