Quaker Quotes V

"If the proportion of questionable involvement is less than ten percent and especially if it is in the one- to five-percent range, I believe the ethical approach is to focus on the positive aspects of the business and to conclude that the bad is overshadowed by the good.

"For me there is a parallel in the disownment of an investment because of a small proportion of impurity and the disownment of members by Friends meetings in the last century because of specific offenses against the prevailing rules. In reading nineteenth-century minutes of meetings in southern Indiana and noting the many disownments, I was impressed that the minutes concentrated solely on the offense with no record of offsetting good deeds or good qualities. Today we would think this is wrong.

"The percentages mentioned above reflect my thinking about broad guidelines, but I caution against decisions dependent on precise mathematical figuring. Ethical selection of investments requires scrutiny of the plus and minus factors pertaining to each company."

- S. Francis Nicholson. "Quaker Money," Pendle Hill Pamphlet 290 (Wallingford, PA: Pendle Hill Publications, 1990).