Corporation: An ingenious device for obtaining profit without individual responsibility.
Interpretation
The quote critiques corporations as entities that generate profit while shielding individuals from accountability.
Ambrose Bierce's quote highlights the concept of corporations as mechanisms that allow for the accumulation of wealth by a group of people without direct responsibility for the impacts of their actions. This undermines personal accountability and raises ethical questions about the nature of profit and the responsibility associated with it, suggesting that such structures can lead to questionable practices in pursuit of financial gain.
In practice
In a discussion about corporate ethics, this quote can illustrate the potential moral pitfalls of profit-driven organizations.
PALM, n. A species of tree . . . of which the familiar "itching palm" ("Palma hominis") is most widely distributed . . . . This noble vegetable exudes a kind of invisible gum, which may be detected by applying to the bark a piece of gold or silver.
Human nature is pretty well balanced; for every lacking virtue there is a rough substitute that will serve at a pinch--as cunning is the wisdom of the unwise, and ferocity the courage of the coward.
Indigestion: A disease which the patient and his friends frequently mistake for deep religious conviction and concern for the salvation of mankind. As the simple Red Man of the Western Wild put it, with, it must be confessed, a certain force: 'Plenty well, no pray; big belly ache, heap God.'
Disobey n:To celebrate with an appropriate ceremony the maturity of a command
NOUMENON, n. That which exists, as distinguished from that which merely seems to exist, the latter being a phenomenon. The noumenon is a bit difficult to locate; it can be apprehended only by a process of reasoning - which is a phenomenon.
PARDON, v. To remit a penalty and restore to the life of crime. To add to the lure of crime the temptation of ingratitude.
The ego is willing but the machine cannot go on. It's the last thing a man will admit, that his mind ages.
Words have no power to impress the mind without the exquisite horror of their reality.
The ultimate notion of right is that which tends to the universal good; and when one's acting in a certain manner has this tendency he has a right thus to act.
I would say any behavior that is not the status quo is interpreted as insanity, when, in fact, it might actually be enlightenment. Insanity is sorta in the eye of the beholder.
The pursuit of otherness, the sense that we are somehow different than our brothers and sisters, no matter where we find them, allows for all the other great evils: racism, sexism, homophobia, violence against gay people and against women.
Act as if the maxim of your action were to become through your will a be general natural law.
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