code of ethics
Dagny, there’s nothing of any importance in life-except how well you do your work.
Nothing. Only that. Whatever else you are, will come from that. It’s the only measure of human value. All the codes of ethics they’ll try to ram down your throat are just so much paper money put out by swindlers to fleece people of their virtues. The code of competence is the only system of morality that’s on a gold standard. When you grow up, you’ll know what I mean.
He wondered why this was a motive that had no power to impel him. Throughout his life, whenever he became convinced that a course of action was right, the desire to follow it had come automatically. What was happening to him?-he wondered. The impossible conflict of feeling reluctance to do that which was right-wasn’t it the basic formula of moral corruption? To recognize one’s guilt, yet feel nothing but the coldest, most profound indifference-wasn’t it a betrayal of that which had been the motor of his life-course and of his pride?
Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged