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Moral Philosophy Quotes

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Moral Philosophy Quotes

“The creed which accepts as the foundation of morals, Utility, or the Greatest-Happiness Principle, holds that actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness. By happiness is intended pleasure, and the absence of pain; by unhappiness, pain, and the privation of pleasure.”

PhilosophyPainPleasureEthicsUtilityMoral PhilosophyUtilitarianismGreatest Happiness Principle
Book:Utilitarianism
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“Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure. It is for them alone to point out what we ought to do, as well as to determine what we shall do. On the one hand the standard of right and wrong, on the other the chain of causes and effects, are fastened to their throne. They govern us in all we do, in all we say, in all we think: every effort we can make to throw off our subjection, will serve but to demonstrate and confirm it. In words a man may pretend to abjure their empire: but in reality he will remain subject to it all the while. The principle of utility recognizes this subjection, and assumes it for the foundation of that system, the object of which is to rear the fabric of felicity by the hands of reason and of law. Systems which attempt to question it, deal in sounds instead of sense, in caprice instead of reason, in darkness instead of light.”

ReasonPhilosophyPainHappinessNaturePleasureMoralityEthicsUtilityMoral PhilosophyUtilitarianismPhilosophy Of Ethics
Book:The Principles of Morals and Legislation
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“A majority of people in these surveys also said that America gives too much aid--but when they were asked how much America should give, the median answers ranged from 5 percent to 10 percent of government spending. In other words, people wanted foreign aid 'cut' to an amount five to ten times greater than the United States actually gives!”

PovertyEthicsCharityMoral PhilosophyForeign Aid
Book:The Life You Can Save: Acting Now to End World Poverty
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“Someone once said to me, 'There are so many religions in the world. They can't all be right.' And my reply was, 'Well, they can't all be wrong either.' All religions in the world today share more commonalities than differences, yet language blinds many from seeing these truths. Some people will tell me that what I write about is straight from their holy book, but the truth is that the main principles found in all holy books were already engraved in all our hearts. If you think common sense, the golden rule and knowing right from wrong are exclusive only to your faith, then you need to open yourself up to the rest of the world's religions.”

LovePhilosophyGodTruthReligionFaithUniverseLiteraturePoliticsBeliefChristianityPrinciplesBooksHonorMoralityEthicsConscienceIslamGod QuotesCommon SenseCatholicismEthicalWrongHinduismRightJudaismGolden RuleRight And WrongSuzy KassemHigher PowerDualismMoral PhilosophyReligionsWorld ReligionsRelkigion Quotes
Book:Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem
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“Science and Metaphysics show us part of what “is”. Logic and Epistemology help us interpret this part and understand how much of it we can really know. And finally, Ethics teaches us how to embrace this knowledge and how to cherry-pick only those things that will give us endurance and contentment in the long run, avoiding those that may keep our hearts buried in the ground; how to live well and decently and how to help the society function properly.”

PhilosophyScienceKnowledgeEthicsLogicMetaphysicsLive WellEpistemologyOntologyMoral Philosophy
Author:Giannis Delimitsos
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“It is clear that spiritual naturalism can be used to defend any ‘positive’, i.e. existing, norm. For it can always be argued that these norms would not be in force if they did not express some traits of human nature. [...] In fact, this form of naturalism is so wide and so vague that it may be used to defend anything. There is nothing that has ever occurred to man which could not be claimed to be ‘natural’; for if it were not in his nature, how could it have occurred to him? Looking back at this brief survey, we may perhaps discern two main tendencies which stand in the way of adopting a critical dualism. The first is a general tendency towards monism, that is to say, towards the reduction of norms to facts. The second lies deeper, and it possibly forms the background of the first. It is based upon our fear of admitting to ourselves that the responsibility for our ethical decisions is entirely ours and cannot be shifted to anybody else; neither to God, nor to nature, nor to society, nor to history. All these ethical theories attempt to find somebody, or perhaps some argument, to take the burden from us. But we cannot shirk this responsibility. Whatever authority we may accept, it is we who accept it. We only deceive ourselves if we do not realize this simple point.”

ResponsibilityHuman NatureEthicsPolitical PhilosophyMoral PhilosophyNature Vs NurtureMonismAvoiding ResponsibilitySpiritual NaturalismEthical Theories
Book:The Open Society and Its Enemies - Volume One: The Spell of Plato
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“Forget all labels and simply live as a human, and you'll have all the morality in you - this morality is text-less - it is law-less - it is boundless - it's simply your whole being, beyond conditioning, beyond norms, beyond stereotypes, beyond definitions, beyond theories, beyond intellectualism, beyond ideologies, beyond sects and beyond images. That morality has no Naskar in it - it has no Nietzsche in it - it has no Schopenhauer in it - it has no bible, no quran, no vedas in it - nor has it any messiah or prophet whatsoever.”

HumanismSecularismScripturesMoral PrinciplesMoral PhilosophyMorality Without ReligionMoral Progress
Book:Morality Absolute
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“Morality is like defecation. When you have the urge to defecate, do you ask an intellectual, what it is like to feel like defecating and how to perform the act of defecation, before you actually go to defecate! You simply feel it and go defecating. The same is with morality. You don't ask a scientist, a philosopher or a priest what morality really is, and how to perform it. You simply feel it and act on it.”

HumanismSecularismScripturesMoral PrinciplesMoral PhilosophyMorality Without ReligionMoral Progress
Book:Morality Absolute
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“When the mind rises punned in the flames of self-realization, distance between human and human disappears as if it never existed in the first place. And this original incarnation of the human mind upon the death of the second hand existence, delivers the world the ultimate bodily manifestation of morality absolute and the liberty it encompasses.”

HumanismSelf RealizationSecularismScripturesMoral PrinciplesMoral PhilosophyMorality Without ReligionMoral ProgressLiberation Of Mankind
Book:Morality Absolute
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“We must not conclude that morals are worthless because they differ according to time and place, and that it would be wise to show our historic learning by at once discarding the moral customs of our group. A little anthropology is a dangerous thing. [...] Social order is none the less necessary; the game must still have rules in order to be played; men must know what to expect of one another in the ordinary circumstances of life. Hence the unanimity with which the members of a society practise its moral code is quite as important as the contents of that code. Our heroic rejection of the customs and morals of our tribe, upon our adolescent discovery of their relativity, betrays the immaturity of our minds; given another decade and we begin to understand that there may be more wisdom in the moral code of the group—the formulated experience of generations of the race—than can be explained in a college course. Sooner or later the disturbing realization comes to us that even that which we cannot understand may be true.”

MoralityMoralsAnthropologyMoral Philosophy
Book:Our Oriental Heritage
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“If we can use an H-bomb--and as you said it's no checker game; it's real, it's war and nobody is fooling around--isn't it sort of ridiculous to go crawling around in the weeds, throwing knives and maybe getting yourself killed . . . and even losing the war . . . when you've got a real weapon you can use to win? What's the point in a whole lot of men risking their lives with obsolete weapons when one professor type can do so much more just by pushing a button?' Zim didn't answer at once, which wasn't like him at all. Then he said softly, 'Are you happy in the Infantry, Hendrick? You can resign, you know.' Hendrick muttered something; Zim said, 'Speak up!' I'm not itching to resign, sir. I'm going to sweat out my term.' I see. Well, the question you asked is one that a sergeant isn't really qualified to answer . . . and one that you shouldn't ask me. You're supposed to know the answer before you join up. Or you should. Did your school have a course in History and Moral Philosophy?' What? Sure--yes, sir.' Then you've heard the answer. But I'll give you my own--unofficial--views on it. If you wanted to teach a baby a lesson, would you cuts its head off?' Why . . . no, sir!' Of course not. You'd paddle it. There can be circumstances when it's just as foolish to hit an enemy with an H-Bomb as it would be to spank a baby with an ax. War is not violence and killing, pure and simple; war is controlled violence, for a purpose. The purpose of war is to support your government's decisions by force. The purpose is never to kill the enemy just to be killing him . . . but to make him do what you want him to do. Not killing . . . but controlled and purposeful violence. But it's not your business or mine to decide the purpose of the control. It's never a soldier's business to decide when or where or how--or why--he fights; that belongs to the statesmen and the generals. The statesmen decide why and how much; the generals take it from there and tell us where and when and how. We supply the violence; other people--"older and wiser heads," as they say--supply the control. Which is as it should be. That's the best answer I can give you. If it doesn't satisfy you, I'll get you a chit to go talk to the regimental commander. If he can't convince you--then go home and be a civilian! Because in that case you will certainly never make a soldier.”

WarForceViolenceMilitaryTrainingMoral Philosophy
Book:Starship Troopers
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“There is no practical rationality then without the virtues of character. The vicious argue unsoundly from false premises about the good, while the akratic ignores the sound arguments available to him. Only the virtuous are able to argue soundly to those conclusions which are their actions […]”

ReasonJusticeRationalityMoral PhilosophyAristotleGreek PhilosophyVirtue EthicsAnalytical Philosophy
Book:Whose Justice? Which Rationality?
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“Today, Adam Smith is famous as the father of capitalism and an advocate of a central tenet of free market thought: that greed is supposedly good and it drives markets. This was an idea pushed by neoliberal economists, inspired by Friedrich Hayeck and Milton Friedman, who had no knowledge of the history of moral philosophy, or of Scotland. What they missed is that no gentleman of his time could ever espouse greed, least of all a professor of moral philosophy. Indeed, Adam Smith recognized greed as an economic driver, and saw it as necessary, but also realized that it was a problem for society. His work was not an espousal of greed, but rather a response to it. His work was an attempt to find a way to reign in commercial greed to support the agrarian order, which he believed to be inherently more productive than business.”

GreedNeoliberalismMoral PhilosophyAdam SmithFriedrich HayekMilton Friedman
Book:Adam Smith: The Kirkcaldy Papers
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“Almost every single intellectual has been obsessed with an illustrious question - what drives morality! Yet none of them has been able to find an actual answer to this question. All that they have done is to publish tons of reading material full with theories and intellectual speculations. The truth is, morality is not driven by anything, it is the one thing that drives everything else. Morality is the fundamental drive of being a civilized conscientious human, that rises through self-awareness and self-regulation.”

InspirationalMoralitySelf RealizationNeuroscienceIntellectualismMoral PrinciplesSelf RegulationMoral PhilosophySeff Awareness
Book:Morality Absolute
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