It was a lesson he absorbed as a boy from his wealthy and cynical father, who taught him that greed, arrogance and unscrupulousness were the way of the world.
Far worse behaviour has come to light, beginning with revelations of phone-hacking at the News of the World on such a scale, and of such unscrupulousness, that the newspaper was quickly closed.
You could say this unscrupulousness was ahead of its time," said Mr Thompson.
Grant obviously loves the comedy of monomaniac egotism: Walter Burns' callousness and unscrupulousness are expressed in some of the best farce lines ever written in this country, and Grant hits those lines with a smack.
The viewer can only be grateful for the centrality of Joe Kennedy (who is brought to magnificent life by Tom Wilkinson); I swear that my heart beat faster whenever he was onscreen, because of the mixture of fear and admiration that his confidence, unscrupulousness, and determination inspired.
The pace and urgency of such orders, combined with the unscrupulousness of manufacturers, led to the production of questionable service shoes.
I'd say I was surprised, except that the total unscrupulousness of this crew is by now something to take for granted.
Of course, years of plenty also brought excess and unscrupulousness in the public and private sectors.
"We are struck by the unscrupulousness of the reckless maneuver that the commander of the Costa Concordia made near the island of Giglio," he told reporters.
Sansom creates a sinister picture of Henry's close circle of advisers: former proteges of Cromwell such as William Paget and Richard Rich, whose utter unscrupulousness makes their mentor seem a model of fair judgment and probity.
The ruling quoted from his medical history, citing case notes prior to his sentence in 1966 by Dr Lindsay Neustatter, senior physician in psychological medicine, describing Brady as "a ruthless individual, cold and unemotional, without conscience or remorse … He showed a pathological admiration of power and unscrupulousness".
