It is a socialist idea that making profits is a vice; I consider the real vice is making losses.
Winston ChurchillRead
Ethics evolve naturally, and we trample upon them with laws created by reason and experience.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Ethics are intrinsic to human nature, but laws can sometimes overshadow them.
This quote by Winston Churchill suggests that ethical principles develop organically within society, shaped by human experiences and interactions. However, as societies evolve, man-made laws can sometimes dominate or undermine these ethical foundations, indicating a potential conflict between natural moral understanding and constructed legal frameworks.
Themes
EthicsLawsHuman NatureMoral UnderstandingSociety
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech on ethical behavior in business, one might quote Churchill to highlight the balance between ethical principles and regulatory compliance.
More from Winston Churchill
All quotes βThe United States is like a gigantic boiler. Once the fire is lit under it, there's no limit to the power it can generate.
Winston ChurchillRead
Politics is almost as exciting as war, and quite as dangerous. In war you can only be killed once, but in politics many times.
Winston ChurchillRead
I will not pretend that if I had to choose between communism and Nazism I would choose communism.
Winston ChurchillRead
Mountaintops inspire leaders but valleys mature them.
Winston ChurchillRead
True genius resides in the capacity for evaluation of uncertain, hazardous, and conflicting information.
Winston ChurchillRead
Similar quotes
More and more people work on Sundays as a consequence of the competitiveness imposed by a consumer society.
Pope FrancisRead
There may be here and there a worker who for certain reasons unexplainable to us does not join a union of labor. That is his right. It is his legal right, no matter how morally wrong he may be. It is his legal right, and no one can or dare question his exercise of that legal right.
Samuel GompersRead
We need not fear life, because God is the Ruler of all and we need not fear death, because He shares immortality with us.
Ann LandersRead
[Buddhism and Christianity] are in one sense parallel and equal; as a mound and a hollow, as a valley and a hill. There is a sense in which that sublime despair is the only alternative to that divine audacity. It is even true that the truly spiritual and intellectual man sees it as sort of dilemma; a very hard and terrible choice. There is little else on earth that can compare with these for completeness. And he who does not climb the mountain of Christ does indeed fall into the abyss of Buddha.
Gilbert K. ChestertonRead
That which is now called natural philosophy, embracing the whole circle of science, of which astronomy occupies the chief place, is the study of the works of God, and of the power and wisdom of God in his works, and is the true theology.
Thomas PaineRead
All emerge from that One Whose Being is ever present and Whose Life, robed in numberless forms, is manifest throughout all creation. Creation is the logical result of the out-push of Life into self-expression.
Ernest HolmesRead