Moral Compromise Quotes

Liberalism: To let things slide for the sake of peace and friendship when a person has clearly gone wrong, and refrain from principled argument because he is an old acquaintance, a fellow townsman, a schoolmate, a close friend, a loved one, an old colleague or old subordinate. Or to touch on the matter lightly instead of going into it thoroughly, so as to keep on good terms. The result is that both the organization and the individual are harmed.

The prince must not mind incurring the scandal of those vices without which it would be difficult to save the state.

Hypocrisy is the homage vice pays to virtue.

He [William Gladstone] made his conscience not his guide but his accomplice.

Can't he understand it if a soldier who has crossed thousands of kilometers through blood and fire and death has fun with a woman or takes some trifle?

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

Any man who tries to be good all the time is bound to come to ruin among the great number who are not good.

The main thing is the ‘rule of corruption’: helping the horse both to race and also to get a mouthful of hay. It’s what all civil servants are secretly thinking. Our expectations for our civil servants are far too high, far too grandiose. The pressure is more than their flesh-and-blood bodies can stand.

It seems that in the world of politics, lying is not such a big deal.

One has to be a lowbrow, a bit of a murderer, to be a politician, ready and willing to see people sacrificed, slaughtered, for the sake of an idea, whether a good one or a bad one.

Intelligence work has one moral law—it is justified by results.

Great men are almost always bad men.

In Hollywood a girl's virtue is much less important than her hairdo. You're judged by how you look, not by what you are. Hollywood's a place where they'll pay you a thousand dollars for kiss, and fifty cents for your soul. I know, because I turned down the first offer often enough and held out for the fifty.

The safest road to hell is the gradual one - the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts.

You can't adopt politics as a profession and remain honest.

Thou shalt not steal. I mean defensively. On offense, indeed thou shall steal and thou must.

Party loyalty lowers the greatest of men to the petty level of the masses.

In any compromise between food and poison, it is only death that can win. In any compromise between good and evil, it is only evil that can profit.

Very rarely do people make big compromises with their integrity. Almost every compromise is a small one that is easily justified. The downhill slide is usually a result of many little compromises.

Even the best-intentioned of great men need a few scoundrels around them; there are some things you cannot ask an honest man to do.

Most of our platitudes notwithstanding, self-deception remains the most difficult deception. The tricks that work on others count for nothing in that very well-lit back alley where one keeps assignation with oneself: no winning smiles will do here, no prettily drawn lists of good intentions. One shuffles flashily but in vain through one's marked cards- the kindness done for the wrong reason, the apparent triumph which involved no real effort, the seemingly heroic act into which one had been shamed.

[Theodore Roosevelt] has sold himself to the devil and will live up to the bargain.

In 1980, evangelicals overwhelmingly elected a candidate who was a known womanizer when he was in Hollywood. He would be the first divorced president in U.S. history. His name was Ronald Reagan. And when evangelicals voted for Reagan, they weren't endorsing womanizing. They weren't endorsing divorce. They were endorsing Reagan's policies.

If he [Franklin Delano Roosevelt] became convinced tomorrow that coming out for cannibalism would get him the votes he so sorely needs, he would begin fattening a missionary on the White House backyard come Wednesday.