“All individuals are imperfect and forgetful and find it difficult to transcend immediate self-interest. Historically therefore it has been deemed essential to create constitutional bodies that uphold and insist on adherence to certain ethical standards…If all these medical ethical bodies are to gain the respect of the public they should remain alert to intervene whenever these standards are threatened.”

—  Frances Ames

Letters, "Biko Revisited", SAMJ, Volume 80, July 20, 1991, p. 107.

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update Nov. 13, 2022. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "All individuals are imperfect and forgetful and find it difficult to transcend immediate self-interest. Historically th…" by Frances Ames?
Frances Ames photo
Frances Ames 3
South African physician 1920–2002

Related quotes

Barbara Jordan photo

“Those who hold the public trust must adhere to the highest ethical standards there are. The job requires it, and the public must demand it.”

Barbara Jordan (1936–1996) American politician

Remarks at the University of Texas at Austin (22 February 1991), as cited in Let me tell you what I've learned https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/0292787901: Texas Wisewomen Speak, PJ Pierce, University of Texas Press (2010), p. 17

Franz Boas photo

“Courtesy, modesty, good manners, conformity to definite ethical standards are universal, but what constitutes courtesy, modesty, good manners, and definite ethical standards is not universal. It is instructive to know that standards differ in the most unexpected ways”

Franz Boas (1858–1942) German-American anthropologist

Boas (1928) in foreword to Margaret Mead (1928) Coming of Age in Samoa.

Marvin Bower photo

“The business with high ethical standards has three primary advantages over competitors whose standards are lower:”

Marvin Bower (1903–2003) American business theorist

A business of high principle generates greater drive and effectiveness because people know they can do the right thing decisively and with confidence. ...
A business of high principle attracts high-caliber people more easily, thereby gaining a basic competitive and profit edge. ...
A business of high principle develops better and more profitable relations with customers, competitors, and the general public, because it can be counted on to do the right thing at all times. By the consistently ethical character of its actions, it builds a favorable image.
Source: The Will to Manage (1966), p. 26

Holden Karnofsky photo

“I generally believe in trying to be an ethical person by a wide variety of different ethical standards”

Holden Karnofsky (1981) American nonprofit executive

In "Staff members' personal donations for giving season 2016" https://blog.givewell.org/2016/12/09/staff-members-personal-donations-giving-season-2016/, December 2016
Context: Regarding (b) ["checking boxes I want to check for considering myself a personally moral/ethical person, which is related but not identical to trying for maximum expected positive impact on the world"]: every year, I want to give a significant amount to "charity" as conventionally construed, straightforwardly helping the less fortunate. I generally believe in trying to be an ethical person by a wide variety of different ethical standards (not all of which are consequentialist). And I wouldn't feel that I were meeting this standard if I were giving nothing (or a trivial amount) to known, outstanding opportunities to help the less fortunate, for purposes of saving as much money as possible for adversarial projects (such as political campaigns) and/or more speculative projects (such as work related to artificial intelligence). I think the best giving opportunities in this category are GiveWell's top charities, so I will be giving a portion of this year's donation there, following the recommended allocation.

“By "regime values," I intend to suggest that the normative foundation of ethical standards for public servants in any regime is the values of that regime. In the United States these regime values happen to be constitutional values, but not every regime takes its constitution as seriously as Americans do… By using the word "regime," my intention was to stress the particularistic character of the values that form the basis of public administration ethics. By emphasizing regime rather than constitution, I hope to make this book more interesting to students from other countries who are studying public administration in the United States.”

John Rohr (1934–2011) American political scientist

(1989, p. ix-x); as cited in: Patrick Overeem, "The Concept of Regime Values Are Revitalization and Regime Change Possible?." The American Review of Public Administration 45.1 (2015): 46-60.
Ethics for bureaucrats, 1988

“The standard model of ethical theory may seem like merely a necessary consequence of applying to normative ethics the high standards of clarity and rigor prized by all of us who like to think of ourselves as philosophers in the analytic tradition. This way of doing ethics obviously parallels the way analytical philosophers treat many other subjects – by formulating generalizations about this or that and testing them against intuitive counterexamples. But I think the Sidgwickian method of intuitional ethics, or the Rawlsian method of reflective equilibrium, is not the only way to think clearly about ethical theory.”

Allen W. Wood (1942) academic

Kantian Ethics (2008)

Ramanuja photo

“The individual self is subject to beginningless nescience, which has brought about an accumulation of karma, of the nature of both merit and demerit. The flood of such karma causes his entry into four kinds of bodies — heavenly, human, animal and plant beginning with that of Brahma downwards. This ingression into bodies produces the delusion of identity with those respective bodies (and the consequent attachments and aversions). This delusion inevitably brings about all the fears inherent in the state of worldly existence. The entire body of Vedanta aims at the annihilation of these fears. To accomplish their annihilation they teach the following:
(1) The essential nature of the individual self as transcending the body.
(2) The attributes of the individual self.
(3) The essential nature of the Supreme that is the inmost controller of both the material universe and the individual selves.
(4) The attributes of the Supreme.
(5) The devout meditation upon the Supreme.
(6) The goal to which such meditation, leads.
The Vedanta aims at making known the goal attainable through such a life of meditation, the goal being the realization, of the real nature of the individual self and after and through that realization, the direct experience of Brahman, which is of the nature of bliss infinite and perfect.”

Ramanuja (1017–1137) Hindu philosopher, exegete of Vishishtadvaita Vedanta school

Source: Vedartha Sangraham, 11th century, p. 9-10.

William H. Starbuck photo

“Professionals identify strongly with their professions, more strongly than with their clients or their employers. They not only observe professional standards, they believe that only members of their professions have the competence and ethics to enforce these standards. Similarly, professionals insist that outsiders cannot properly supervise their activities.
Management consulting and software engineering, for example, do not qualify as recognized professions. Without doubt, those who do these jobs well have rare expertise. Nevertheless, the ultimate judges of their expertise are their clients or their supervisors, and their employers set and enforce their ethical codes and performance standards”

William H. Starbuck (1934) American academic

Source: Learning by knowledge‐intensive firms," 1992, p. 717

Reinhold Niebuhr photo

“[The value and dignity of the individual] is threatened whenever it is assumed that individual desires, hopes and ideals can be fitted with frictionless harmony into the collective purposes of man. The individual is not discrete. He cannot find his fulfillment outside of the community; but he also cannot find fulfillment completely within society. In so far as he finds fulfillment within society he must abate his individual ambitions. He must 'die to self' if he would truly live. In so far as he finds fulfillment beyond every historical community he lives his life in painful tension with even the best community, sometimes achieving standards of conduct which defy the standards of the community with a resolute "we must obey God rather than man."”

Reinhold Niebuhr (1892–1971) American protestant theologian

The Irony of American History (1952)

Robert G. Ingersoll photo

“For hundreds of years the Bible was the standard, and whenever anything was asserted in any science contrary to-the Bible, the church immediately denounced the scientist. I admit the standard has been changed, and ministers are very busy, not trying to show that science does not agree with the Bible, but that the Bible agrees with science.”

Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) Union United States Army officer

A Christmas Sermon (1890)

Related topics