I believe the moral losses of expediency always far outweigh the temporary gains.
Interpretation
Short-term benefits gained through unethical behavior are often outweighed by long-term moral consequences.
Wendell Willkie's quote emphasizes the importance of maintaining moral integrity over seeking immediate benefits through expedient decisions. It suggests that while taking shortcuts may lead to temporary advantages, such actions can lead to greater moral and ethical losses that harm one's character and reputation in the long run.
In practice
During a corporate ethics seminar, this quote could be used to highlight the importance of ethical decision-making.
Freedom is an indivisible word. If we want to enjoy it, and fight for it, we must be prepared to extend it to everyone, whether they are rich or poor, whether they agree with us or not, no matter what their race or the color of their skin.
It is from weakness that people reach for dictators and concentrated government power. Only the strong can be free. And only the productive can be strong.
Today it is becoming increasingly apparent to thoughtful Americans that we cannot fight the forces and ideas of imperialism abroad and maintain any form of imperialism at home. The war has done this to our thinking.
No man has a right in America to treat any other man "tolerantly" for tolerance is the assumption of superiority. Our liberties are equal rights of every citizen.
To suppress minority thinking and minority expression would tend to freeze society and prevent progress. Now more than ever we must keep in the forefront of our minds the fact that whenever we take away the liberties of those we hate, we are opening the way to loss of liberty for those we love.
I was born in South Africa during apartheid, a system of laws that made it illegal for people to mix in South Africa. And this was obviously awkward because I grew up in a mixed family. My mother's a black woman, South African Xhosa woman... and my father's Swiss, from Switzerland.
Jim Crow segregation was bipartisan. The refusal of women suffrage was bipartisan. The denial of the basic dignity of members of the LGBTQ community has long been bipartisan. The Three-Fifths Compromise was the creation of a punitive national unity at the expense of black people's basic humanity.
The hoop dancer dances within what encircles him, demonstrating how the people live in motion within the circling spirals of time and space. They are no more limited than water and sky. At green corn dance time, water and sky come together, in Indian time, to make rain.
It is only human supremacy, which is as unacceptable as racism and sexism, that makes us afraid of being more inclusive.
The purpose of life is to realize God within ourselves. This can be done even whilst attending to our worldly duties.
I live in my own place - have never copied anyone even half, and at any master who lacks the grace - to laugh at himself - I laugh.
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