"I mean, today you probably will have some opportunities to take stuff and put it in your backpack, and nobody would know. You could take some silverware, there’s cups, there’s all kinds of things you could take home with nobody noticing, and no probability of being caught. If you’re a rational economist you would say, you should take all those options, there’s opportunity! But of course you think differently — if you did that, you’d feel you’re a bad person, and that’s what’s stopping you. The curious thing is that what stops us, doesn’t stop us from doing everything. We have a fudge factor, we have an ability to rationalize some dishonesty and as long as we cheat just a little bit, we can still rationalize it."
React to this quote
More by Dan Ariely
See allResonant Thoughts
"In a society where commonweal does not exist, there are no duties, only exactations to be avoided, and no freedoms, only privileges to be grabbed. There can be no such thing as "public services" becau…"
Explore Further
Related Quotes
"In seeking the truth you have to get both sides of the story."
— Walter Cronkite"By engaging in a form of honest reflection and self-interrogation, the white American researcher would poss…"
— Donaldo Macedo"One should not comment on the actual motivating factor of the whole expedition, for if we were completely h…"
— Helmuth von Moltke the Younger"It is the human condition to question one god after another, one appearance after another, or better, one a…"
— Émile Chartier"One cliché endlessly offered up by the people supporting government surveillance is that there needs to be …"
— John Twelve Hawks"The centre of gravity of any parallelogram lies on the straight line joining the middle points of opposite …"
— Archimedes
