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Few men, indeed, are so mad that they do not know when they are doing wrong. But so avid is their pursuit of goods that wrongdoing has become an element of all they do. To protest that fact is idle. Our politics, our business-little and big, our professions, our labor, are smitten in every facet with a corruption occasioned by reckless determination to make not just a reasonable profit but all the profit that can be wrung from every enterprise. Our commonest man, emulating his superiors, forges ahead with a brick on the safety valve of his conscience. Think over your morning paper in that light.

Philip Wylie#4

BusinessConscienceCorruptionEthicsProfit

About this quote

What does it mean?
Most people know when they are doing wrong but prioritize profit over conscience. This greed has infected politics, business, and labor across all sectors.
In plain terms
People often choose profit over morality, corrupting all areas of life.
What can you take from it?
Resist profit motives that override ethical standards.

Where it applies

  • workplace ethics
  • political criticism
  • corporate reviews

Putting it to work

  • advocating ethics in business
  • demanding transparency
  • supporting fair labor

Questions to consider

  • Where do you see profit overriding ethics?
  • How do you protect your conscience in work?

Another view

It assumes universal complicity without offering concrete solutions for systemic change.

More from Philip Wylie

  1. Ignorance is not bliss -- it is oblivion. Determined ignorance is the hastiest kind of oblivion.

    Permalink to quote #3
  2. The church has stood, a rock colossus of bigotry, in the path of ten thousand proposed reforms. Sane efforts to legalize birth control information, the manufac…

    Permalink to quote #5
  3. Common man has at long last got himself so far out of gear with nature and his environment that he is beginning to see the shape of extinction, whether he reco…

    Permalink to quote #2

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