Quotes & Sayings About Misconduct

Study carefully, the character of the one you recommend, lest their misconduct bring you shame. — Marcus Tullius Cicero

The state, by relieving idleness, improvidence, or misconduct from punishment, and depriving abstinence and foresight of the reward, which have been provided for them by nature, may indeed destroy wealth, but most certainly will aggravate poverty. — Nassau William Senior

I think it is important that independent government agencies be put in charge of investigating misconduct so that police departments are no longer allowed to police themselves. There is a conflict of interest there which, I believe, allows police to excuse their own behavior. — Bernie Sanders

Still, even now, when a woman says something uncomfortable about male misconduct, she is routinely portrayed as delusional, a malicious conspirator, a pathological liar, a whiner who doesn't recognize it's all in fun, or all of the above. — Rebecca Solnit

The business of popularizing crime is how we expose the faults in our justice system. It's how we expose police misconduct. — Bill James

You must realize ... that the men of the Valley have built their houses and brought up their families without help from others, without a word from the Government. Their lives have been ordered from birth by the Bible. From it they took their instructions. They had no other guidance, and no other law. If it has produced hypocrites and pharisees, the fault is in the human race. We are not all angels. Our fathers upheld good conduct and rightful dealing by strictness, but it is in Man Adam to be slippery, and many are as slimy as the adder. The wonder is to me that the men of the Valley are as they are, and not barbarians at all.I was sorry for Meillyn Lewis, too. But that session of the deacons was helpful as a preventative. It was cruel, but it is more cruel to allow misconduct to flourish without check. — Richard Llewellyn

Scientific fraud, plagiarism, and ghost writing are increasingly being reported in the news media, creating the impression that misconduct has become a widespread and omnipresent evil in scientific research. — Heinrich Rohrer

As to ethics, unfortunately, we are still at sea. We never did have any popular base for what little ethics we knew, except the religious theories, and now that our faith is shaken in those theories we cannot account for ethics at all. It is no wonder we behave badly, we are literally ignorant of the laws of ethics, which is the simplest of sciences, the most necessary, the most continuously needed. The childish misconduct of our 'revolted youth' is quite equaled by that of older people, and neither young nor old seem to have any understanding of the reasons why conduct is 'good' or 'bad. — Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Hope you've been keeping your nose clean," DS Bradshaw said, trying to be jovial as he sipped a bottle of beer. I wondered what the police force would make of the fact that he was drinking alcohol at barely half past three in the afternoon. I would inform them at the first given opportunity, and also of his professional misconduct re Mum. — Matthew Crow

I happened to know for a fact that the whole of Belgravia nick were running a pool on how long I would last and how I would go - the options being death, medical discharge (physical), medical discharge (psychological), indefinite disciplinary suspension, sacked for misconduct, secondment to Interpol and, with just one vote, ascension to a higher plane of existence. I suspected the last one was a bit unlikely. Guleed — Ben Aaronovitch

To be disgraced in the eye of the world, to wear the appearance of infamy while her heart is all purity, her actions all innocence, and the misconduct of another the true source of her debasement, is one of those circumstances which peculiarly belong to the heroine's life, and her fortitude under it what particularly dignifies her character. Catherine had fortitude too; she suffered, but no mumur passed her lips. — Jane Austen

It is very rare, indeed, for men to be wrong in their feelings concerning public misconduct; as rare to be right in their speculations upon the cause of it. I have constantly observed that the generality of people are fifty years, at least, behind in their politics. — Edmund Burke

When Al Gore picked Joe Lieberman, it was a clear declaration of independence from President Clinton; no Democrat had been more critical of Clinton's misconduct. — Jeff Greenfield

There are still eight of us," Guy pointed out. "Not exactly an even fight."
"I was thinking the same thing," Mauvin said. "Sadly, there's no one else here we can ask to join your side."
Guy looked at Mauvin, then Hadrian, for a long moment as the men glared across the ash at each other. Then he nodded and lowered his blade. "Well, I can see I'll have to report your misconduct to the archbishop."
"Go ahead," Hadrian said. "His body is buried with the rest of them just down the hillside. — Michael J. Sullivan

About the twelfth year of my age, my father being abroad, my mother reproved me for some misconduct, to which I made an undutiful reply. The next first-day, as I was with my father returning from meeting, he told me that he understood I had behaved amiss to my mother, and advised me to be more careful in future. I knew myself blamable, and in shame and confusion remained silent. Being thus awakened to a sense of my wickedness, I felt remorse in my mind, and on getting home I retired and prayed to the Lord to forgive me, and I do not remember that I ever afterwards spoke unhandsomely to either of my parents, however foolish in some other things. — Various

Oh, what a nation of moralists the Americans are! With what fervor do they relish bringing their sexual misconduct to light! A pity that they do not bring their moral outrage to bear on their president's arrogance above the law; a pity that they do not unleash their moral zest on an administration that runs guns to terrorists. But, of course, boudoir morality takes less imagination, and can be indulged in without the effort of keeping up with world affairs - or even bothering to know "the whole story" behind the sexual adventure. — John Irving

So many individuals, children, couples, and families have been destroyed by sexual misconduct. To practice the Third Precept is to heal ourselves and heal our society. This is mindful living. — Thich Nhat Hanh

You know how the church has been hit so hard by the sexual misconduct by clergy, and what's that's done to Catholics, especially here in Boston but elsewhere as well. — William P. Leahy

In those days he seemed to be a nice old gentleman, and his existence always served practical purposes, such as when I was accused of misconduct, for then I could shift the blame to him by saying, "Old Tacet did it." Naturally, no one would believe me, this being a last-ditch effort to avoid the hairbrush. If my mother were alive today, she'd laugh at me for still fantasizing - yet it's the truth.
Even now, whenever necessary, I still summon forth the old geezer - in theater programs, for example, to credit him for costumes that I've designed, ones for which I prefer not getting the hook. Yes, he's another of my names: the unlikely but lovely and perfectly logical — Paul Taylor

Now, are those engaged in the business of governing any different by nature from those they govern?"
"Yes. They're prideful and tend to sexual misconduct. Also, the situation of being in government tends to drive you mad."
"But are they more virtuous or more intelligent? Or more compassionate?"
"Ha!"
"Let's call that one a 'no. — Nick Harkaway

It is a just retribution for improper sexual misconduct — Mother Teresa

In representing criminal defendants especially guilty ones it is often necessary to take the offensive against the government: to put the government on trial for its misconduct. In law, as in sports, the best defense is often a good offense. The courtroom oath to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth is applicable only to witnesses ... because the American justice system is built on a foundation of not telling the whole entire truth. — Alan Dershowitz

In Devon, England, a rare ritual has been recorded wherein the stag represented the offense or misconduct (often of a sexual nature) of a local person. A mock "hunt" was enacted with characters playing the stag, dog, and hunters. This strange and noisy pageant of implication was run through the village, ending finally at the doorstep of the offender. There the stag was "killed" with all ceremony, even including the bursting of a bladder full of blood. It was thought that after such a communal condemnation, the offender would leave the village never to return — Jacqueline Simpson

The Third Precept, to refrain from sexual misconduct, reminds us not to act out of sexual desire in such a way as to cause harm to another ... The spirit of this precept asks us to look at the motivation behind our actions. To pay attention in this way allows us, as laypeople, to discover how sexuality can be connected to the heart and how it can be an expression of love, caring, and genuine intimacy. We have almost all been fools at some time in our sexual lives, and we have also used sex to try to touch what is beautiful, to touch another person deeply. Conscious sexuality is an essential part of living a mindful life (86). — Jack Kornfield

When a baronet is discovered behind a bush in the park with a guardsman, or a minister of the crown is caught creeping out of a country with his socks stuffed full of bank notes and a woman not his wife ten paces behind, or a public person is revealed disporting himself with a couple of tarts and a teddy bear in West Paddington, they complain to the press that the outcry is hypocritical and that everyone would like to do what they were doing if only they had the chance. They regard the law as an instrument of envy, like nationalization and death duties. — Alice Thomas Ellis

Do not you see that every misfortune is misconduct; that every honour is desert; that every effort is an insolence of your own? ... You carry your fortune in your own hand. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

If an astronomer calculates from the sky
he will ascertain the paths of the moon and the stars;
but in his house the womenfolk are at variance,
and he does not perceive their various misconduct. — Nagarjuna

A female prisoner who alleges sexual misconduct on the part of a guard is invariably locked in the SHU in "protective custody," losing her housing assignment, program activities (if there are any), work assignment, and a host of other prison privileges, not to mention the comfort of her routine and friends. — Piper Kerman

The long-simmering anger at racism and economic injustice of alienated black youth in the ghettoes was erupting into violent and destructive urban insurrections. In every case these "riots" were triggered by police brutality or misconduct, most usually the killing or brutalizing of an unarmed black man. — H. Rap Brown

When you teach your students that it's "economically rational" to commit crimes where the fines for misconduct are lower than the expected return on the crime, you instill a professional ethic that has no room for morals. — Cory Doctorow

They settled the question, by deciding that misfortunes most commonly happen to us from our own misconduct or imprudence; but sometimes from causes independent of ourselves; that the most innocent and prudent conduct cannot always preserve us from them; and that, whether they arise from our own fault or not, trust in God softens them, and renders them useful in preparing us for a better life. — Alessandro Manzoni

[Imeachable conduct is] misconduct by public men, or, in other words, from the abuse or violation of some public trust. — Alexander Hamilton

Everything is upon a great scale upon this continent. The rivers are immense, the climate violent in heat and cold, the prospects magnificent, the thunder and lightning tremendous. The disorders incident to the country make every constitution tremble. Our own blunders here, our misconduct, our losses, our disgraces, our ruin, are on a great scale. - LORD CARLISLE, TO GEORGE SELWYN, 1778 — Neil Gaiman

Nobody could say it is not gross misconduct to fight on the pitch with team-mates and get yourself sent off. — Gordon Taylor

University of Maryland officials have concluded that a vulgar e-mail a student sent to members of his fraternity last year was "hateful and reprehensible" but did not violate the school's policies and is protected by the First Amendment guarantees of freedom of speech. University President Wallace D. Loh announced Wednesday the results of an investigation that involved campus and Prince George's County police, as well as the university's Office of Civil Rights and Sexual Misconduct. At issue was a private — Anonymous

A Medical Affair is more than compelling fiction. It also is a powerful narrative about how relationships between physicians and patients can evolve in unethical, even unlawful ways. And as a medical ethicist and educator, I was delighted to see Strauss deftly weave important information about sexual misconduct by physicians into her story line."
David Orentlicher
Professor of law, medicine and ethics at Indiana University. Oversaw drafting of American Medical Association's ethical guidelines on intimate relationships between physicians and their patients — Anne McCarthy Strauss

Our aim is not to do away with corporations; on the contrary, these big aggregations are an inevitable development of modern industrialism, and the effort to destroy them would be futile unless accomplished in ways that would work the utmost mischief to the entire body politic. We can do nothing of good in the way of regulating and supervising these corporations until we fix clearly in our minds that we are not attacking the corporations, but endeavoring to do away with any evil in them. We are not hostile to them; we are merely determined that they shall be so handled as to subserve the public good. We draw the line against misconduct, not against wealth. — Theodore Roosevelt

You wanna know people are held accountable if they engage in misconduct and that no one is above the law. — Eric Schneiderman

Constitutional provisions are not barriers to government misconduct. At best, they can be speed bumps. — Arnold Kling

An annual or frequent choice of Magistrates, who in a year, or in a few years, are again left upon a level with their neighbors, is most likely to prevent usurpation and tyranny ... If rulers know that they shall in short period of time, be again out of power, and ... may be liable to be called to account for misconduct, it will guard them against maladministration. — Clinton Rossiter

Among Jews, there is an absence of drunkenness, always a fruitful source of domestic strife and misconduct. — Hermann Adler

Among us, in our part of the country, those who are upright are different from this. The father conceals the misconduct of the son, and the son conceals the misconduct of the father. Uprightness is to be found in this. — Confucius

As a result of its investigation, the NIH said that to qualify for funding, all proposals for research on human subjects had to be approved by review boards - independent bodies made up of professionals and laypeople of diverse races, classes, and backgrounds - to ensure that they met the NIH's ethics requirements, including detailed informed consent. Scientists said medical research was doomed. In a letter to the editor of Science, one of them warned, When we are prevented from attempting seemingly innocuous studies of cancer behavior in humans ... we may mark 1966 as the year in which all medical progress ceased. — Rebecca Skloot

But here's my point to the LA Times. If you had a serious story to run, if you thought there was serious misconduct, you don't wait until the Thursday before the Tuesday. You run it early. — Susan Estrich

Great nations are never impoverished by private, though they sometimes are by public prodigality and misconduct. — Adam Smith

All evolution in thought and conduct must at first appear as heresy and misconduct. — George Bernard Shaw

When I replayed the whole incident in my mind, what bothered me most was the moment when the officer drew his weapon and I thought about running. I was a twenty-eight-year-old lawyer who had worked on police misconduct cases. I had the judgment to speak calmly to the officer when he threatened to shoot me. When I thought about what I would have done when I was sixteen years old or nineteen or even twenty-four, I was scared to realize that I might have run. The more I thought about it, the more concerned I became about all the young black boys and men in that neighborhood. Did they know not to run? — Bryan Stevenson

But what are friends? What is a husband, even, compared with one's Mother? Of her love, one is always so sure! It is the only love that nothing - not even misconduct on our part - can take away from us. — Jane Welsh Carlyle

In most communities it is illegal to cry "fire" in a crowded assembly. Should it not be considered serious international misconduct to manufacture a general war scare in an effort to achieve local political aims? — Dwight D. Eisenhower

The psychiatric endeavor - voodoo, really - is premised on the medicalization of misconduct. — Ilana Mercer

Capitals are increased by parsimony, and diminished by prodigalityand misconduct. By what a frugal man annually saves he not onlyaffords maintenance to an additional number of productive hands?but?he establishes as it were a perpetual fund for the maintenance of an equal number in all times to come. — Adam Smith

[Abusers] blame the world - circumstances, other people - for their defeats, misfortune, misconduct, and failures. The abuser firmly believes that his life is swayed by currents and persons over which he has no influence whatsoever (he has an external locus of control).

But there are even subtler variants of this psychological defense mechanism. Not infrequently an abuser will say: "I made a mistake because I am stupid", implying that his deficiencies and inadequacy are things he cannot help having and cannot change. This is also an alloplastic defense because it abrogates responsibility.

Many abusers exclaim: "I misbehaved because I completely lost my temper." On the surface, this appears to be an autoplastic defense with the abuser assuming responsibility for his misconduct. But it could be interpreted as an alloplastic defense, depending on whether the abuser believes that he can control his temper. — Sam Vaknin

A consciousness of misfortunes arising from a man's own misconduct aggravates their bitterness. — Aesop

The violations of these diesel motors by our company go against everything that Volkswagen stands for ... at this time, I don't yet have the answers to all the questions. I'm utterly sorry that we have damaged trust in this way. I offer my deepest apologies to our customers, the authorities, and to the public at large for our misconduct. — Martin Winterkorn

The damage done to this country by its own misconduct in the last few months and years, to its very heart and soul, is far greater and longer lasting than any damage that any terrorist could possibly inflict upon us. — Theodore C. Sorensen

The notion that persons should be safe from extermination as long as they do not commit willful murder, or levy war against the Crown, or kidnap, or throw vitriol, is not only to limit social responsibility unnecessarily, and to privilege the large range of intolerable misconduct that lies outside them, but to divert attention from the essential justification for extermination, which is always incorrigible social incompatibility and nothing else. — George Bernard Shaw

He felt sandbagged. Doomsday, Armageddon. Booze begets instant misconduct and regret. He walked to the couch and fell down. — James Ellroy

Some folks in the office said I should explain in my complaint that I was a civil rights attorney working on police misconduct cases. It seemed to me that no one should need those kinds of credentials to complain about misconduct by police officers. — Bryan Stevenson

Congress' dynastic politics has shattered the hopes & aspirations of people. Congress hides behind the veil of secularism whenever its governance falters and its misconduct is exposed. This will no longer go unchallenged. The younger generation will not accept these actions of Congress! — Narendra Modi

As I listened to his cunning, scripted message, I became even angrier. He never apologized to us. He never apologized for putting us in that position. He lied out of both ends of his mouth, blaming the Secret Service while saying he wanted to be forthcoming but couldn't - two lies in one! He and his staff created the Protective Function Privilege. He was the one who did the deed, committed the misconduct. He was the one who lied. Not only did he never apologize for costing the taxpayers, the Justice Department, the Secret Service, his staff, his constituents, or anyone for putting them through the ringer, endangering our careers, and our very lives. He wanted us to believe that he was sorry for embarrassing his family, Chelsea and Hillary. (I can understand about Chelsea.) — Gary J. Byrne

When a wise man is advised of his errors, he will reflect on and improve his conduct. When his misconduct is pointed out, a foolish man will not only disregard the advice but rather repeat the same error. — Gautama Buddha

If people of one's own side have good conduct, it adds power to oneself. The misconduct on the contrary render one powerless. The enemy taks advantage of it. A skilled statesman never allows enemy to win over. — Chanakya

There is this peculiar blind spot in the culture of academic medicine around whether withholding trial results is research misconduct. People who work in any industry can reinforce each others' ideas about what is okay. — Ben Goldacre

...it reveals the legacy of an environmental catastrophe, its human tolls and triumphs, its corporate greed and indifference, its governmental lapses and neglect. In its historic sweep, it stands as a cautionary tale -- timeless and time-bound -- in a country divided by class and religion, buffeted by corporate misconduct, and dismantling its environmental protection laws. This is the story of a dying coal town ensnared in the Reagan Revolution's afterbirth, of a small community rent by one of the mining industry's worst disasters, and of the irreplaceable bond of home. — Joan Quigley

The West has institutions that can punish the misconduct of individuals. What drove Rwanda and Africa into decline was the fact that certain people weren't held accountable. When we move to make corrupt mayors or officers answer to the courts, people always immediately say that we are repressive. But should we allow these people to continue to get away with it? — Paul Kagame

The prosecution [of impeachments], will seldom fail to agitate the passions of the whole community, and to divide it into parties more or less friendly or inimical to the accused. The subjects of its jurisdiction are those offenses which proceed from the misconduct of public men, or, in other words, from the abuse or violation of some public trust, and they relate chiefly to injuries done immediately to the society itself. — Alexander Hamilton