The ethic of midnight
- quote
Midnight is the hour when men desperately seek to obey the eleventh commandment, “Thou shalt not get caught.” According to the ethic of midnight, the cardinal sin is to be caught and the cardinal virtue is to get by. It is all right to lie, but one must lie with real finesse. It is all right to steal, if one is so dignified that, if caught, the charge becomes embezzlement, not robbery. It is permissible even to hate, if one so dressed his hating in the garments of love that hating appears to be loving. The Darwinian concept of survival of the fittest has been substituted by a philosophy of survival of the slickest.
— Martin Luther King Jr. in A Knock at Midnight