# Quote — John Brunner, The Jagged Orbit

> That, chiefly, was why Flamen put up with him. He had never dared tarnish his own image of himself by learning the whore’s-trading skills required to keep afloat in the cut-throat ocean of modern business, yet he correspondingly did not dare to forgo them altogether. Prior was a perfect compromise: the epitome of self-deluded honor, who could dismiss the most flagrant kind of cheating from his conscience on the grounds that he had thought of it and he could not possibly be a dishonest man.

- Author: [John Brunner](https://www.leafyquotes.com/john-brunner.md)
- Book: [The Jagged Orbit](https://www.leafyquotes.com/john-brunner/the-jagged-orbit.md)
- Page: 53
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_Brunner#The_Jagged_Orbit_(1969)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/john-brunner/the-jagged-orbit/that-chiefly-was

## More from this book

> His brief and frustrating dialogue with them had convinced him that they must divide the human race into three categories: staff, patients and potential patients.

p. 73 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/john-brunner/the-jagged-orbit/his-brief-and.md)

> Western culture is undergoing a process of transition from guilt-oriented, with a conscience, to shame-oriented, with a morbid fear of being found out.

p. 10 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/john-brunner/the-jagged-orbit/western-culture-is-undergoing.md)

> It was his hope and ambition to cause many deaths. He was an arms salesman by choice, calm and even a little happy to see his products in such demand, capable of trying to clinch a sale at the bedside of a fresh corpse.

p. 163 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/john-brunner/the-jagged-orbit/it-was-his.md)