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Moral Philosophy Quotes

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Moral Philosophy Quotes

“After all, pain, exile, or confinement are sometimes accepted when dictated by good sense or by the doctor. In the eyes of the rebel, what is missing from the misery of the world, as well as from its moments of happiness, is some principle by which they can be explained. The insurrection against evil is, above all, a demand for unity. The rebel obstinately confronts a world condemned to death and the impenetrable obscurity of the human condition with his demand for life and absolute clarity. He is seeking, without knowing it, a moral philosophy or a religion. Rebellion, even though it is blind, is a form of asceticism. Therefore, if the rebel blasphemes, it is in the hope of finding a new god.”

RebelMoral PhilosophyNew God
Book:The Rebel
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“What now matters most is how we respond to various risks to the survival of humanity. We are creating some of these risks, and discovering how we could respond to these and other risks. If we reduce these risks, and humanity survives the next few centuries, our descendants or successors could end these risks by spreading through this galaxy. Life can be wonderful as well as terrible, and we shall increasingly have the power to make life good. Since human history may be only just beginning, we can expect that future humans, or supra-humans, may achieve some great goods that we cannot now even imagine. In Nietzsche’s words, there has never been such a new dawn and clear horizon, and such an open sea. If we are the only rational beings in the Universe, as some recent evidence suggests, it matters even more whether we shall have descendants or successors during the billions of years in which that would be possible. Some of our successors might live lives and create worlds that, though failing to justify past suffering, would give us all, including some of those who have suffered, reasons to be glad that the Universe exists.”

PhilosophyEthicsMoral PhilosophyConsequentialismExistential RiskEffective AltruismDerek Parfit
Book:On What Matters: Volume 3
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“It is a strange notion that the acknowledgment of a first principle is inconsistent with the admission of secondary ones. To inform a traveler respecting the place of his ultimate destination, is not to forbid the use of land-marks and direction-posts on the way. The proposition that happiness is the end and aim of morality, does not mean that no road ought to be laid down to that goal, or that persons going thither should not be advised to take one direction rather than another. Men really ought to leave off talking a kind of nonsense on this subject, which they would neither talk nor listen to on other matters of practical concernment. Nobody argues that the art of navigation is not founded on astronomy, because sailors cannot wait to calculate the Nautical Almanack. Being rational creatures, they go to sea with it ready calculated; and all rational creatures go out upon the sea of life with their minds made up on the common questions of right and wrong, as well as on many of the far more difficult questions of wise and foolish. And this, as long as foresight is a human quality, it is to be presumed they will continue to do. Whatever we adopt as the fundamental principle of morality, we require subordinate principles to apply it by: the impossibility of doing without them, being common to all systems, can afford no argument against any one in particular: but gravely to argue as if no such secondary principles could be had, and as if mankind had remained till now, and always must remain, without drawing any general conclusions from the experience of human life, is as high a pitch, I think, as absurdity has ever reached in philosophical controversy.”

UtilityMoral PhilosophyUtilitarianismConsequentialismImpracticalResponse To Common Critisism
Book:Utilitarianism
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“The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.”

MenPhilosophyCharacterPoliticalPoliticsMoralVirtueModernHonestyIgnorancePoliticianMoralityExerciseIntegrityClimate ChangeConservativeSelfishSuperiorsSelfishnessEngagedLiberalismJustificationConservatismMoral PhilosophySelf JustificationAnti ConservativeModern PhilosophyModern PoliticsConservative Political
Author:John Kenneth Galbraith
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“Nothing, indeed, could be more unlike the tone of the [Patristic] Fathers, than the cold, passionless, and prudential theology of the eighteenth century; a theology which regarded Christianity as an admirable auxiliary to the police force, and a principle of decorum and of cohesion in society, but which carefully banished from it all enthusiasm, veiled or attenuated all its mysteries, and virtually reduced it to an authoritative system of moral philosophy.”

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Author:William Edward Hartpole Lecky
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“Over the centuries, we've moved on from Scripture to accumulate precepts of ethical, legal and moral philosophy. We've evolved a liberal consensus of what we regard as underpinnings of decent society, such as the idea that we don't approve of slavery or discrimination on the grounds of race or sex, that we respect free speech and the rights of the individual. All of these things that have become second nature to our morals today owe very little to religion, and mostly have been won in opposition to the teeth of religion.”

LittlesHas BeensIdeasPhilosophyTodayIndividualSexRaceMoralRightsAtheismCenturySpeechRegardSlaveryMovedPositive AtheismScriptureDiscriminationTeethDecentOppositionEthicalFree SpeechConsensusMoved OnMoral Philosophy
Author:Richard Dawkins
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“I do not believe that a moral philosophy can ever be founded on a scientific basis. … The valuation of life and all its nobler expressions can only come out of the soul’s yearning toward its own destiny. Every attempt to reduce ethics to scientific formulas must fail. Of that I am perfectly convinced.”

LifeBelieveSoulPhilosophyBeliefMoralDestinyFailingExpressionFailureEthicsBasesConvincedFormulasYearningScience And ReligionReductionMoral PhilosophyValuation
Book:Einstein on Politics: His Private Thoughts and Public Stands on Nationalism, Zionism, War, Peace, and the Bomb
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“I would say to anybody who thinks that all the problems in philosophy can be translated into empirically verifiable answers - whether it be a Lawrence Krauss thinking that physics is rendering philosophy obsolete or a Sam Harris thinking that neuroscience is rendering moral philosophy obsolete - that it takes an awful lot of philosophy - philosophy of science in the first case, moral philosophy in the second - even to demonstrate the relevance of these empirical sciences.”

ThinkingFirstsPhilosophyProblemAnswersMoralCasesPhysicsAwfulNeuroscienceRelevanceObsoleteRenderingPhilosophy Of ScienceMoral Philosophy
Author:Rebecca Goldstein
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“God doesn't help. I think that's a knockdown argument. I think that it really shows that whatever moral knowledge we have and whatever moral progress we make in our knowledge or whatever progress we make in our moral knowledge is not coming really from religion. It's coming from the very hard work really of moral philosophy, of trying to ground our moral reasonings.”

ThinkingTryingHardPhilosophyHelpingShowsMoralProgressHard WorkArgumentReasoningMoral PhilosophyMoral Reasoning
Author:Rebecca Goldstein
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“Elegant and lucid . . . a pitch-perfect clarion call, issued not with preachy hubris but from a deep place of humility, for awakening to the greatest rewards of living . . . The Road to Character is an essential read in its entirety-Anne Lamott with a harder edge of moral philosophy, Seneca with a softer edge of spiritual sensitivity, E. F. Schumacher for perplexed moderns.”

PhilosophyCharacterSpiritualPerfectMoralHumilityEssentialsHarderRewardsEdgesAwakeningSensitivityElegantHubrisEntiretyMoral PhilosophyPerplexedSchumacherPitch Perfect
Author:Maria Popova
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“When we call something unfair or indecent or unconscionable or evil, when we speak of mercy and pity and compassion, those words have meaning, regardless of our particular faith or moral philosophy. They appeal to common standards we all are expected to understand and accept, standards without which we could not live any common life at all.”

PhilosophyEvilSpeakCommonCompassionAcceptingMoralParticularStandardsMercyExpectedPityAppealsUnfairMoral PhilosophyCommon Life
Book:Dominion: The Power of Man, the Suffering of Animals, and the Call to Mercy
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“We are now returning to the 18th century empirical approach with the new interest in the evolutionary basis of ethics, with 'experimental' moral philosophy and moral psychology. As a result, we understand better why moral formulas are experienced as ineluctable commands, even if there is no commander and even if the notion of an inescapable obligation is just superstition. So moral philosophy has made huge progress.”

IfsMadePhilosophyInterestResultsMoralPsychologyProgressCenturyHugeApproachEthicsBasesNotionObligationCommandFormulasSuperstitionsCommanders18th CenturyMoral Philosophy
Author:Catherine Wilson
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“How could it be that I had a legal obligation to kill people I did not know, and who did certainly not consent to it, while my father's doctor could not help my father to die when my farther asked for it? My consternation brought me to moral philosophy and a life-long search for an answer to the question when and why we should, and when we shouldn't, kill.”

PeopleKnowsShouldLongPhilosophyHelpingDiesFatherAnswersMoralDoctorsObligationConsentLong LifeMoral PhilosophyConsternation
Author:Torbjorn Tannsjo
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“The Consequentialist trinity is typically regarded in this way: Bentham is crude, Mill's writings are full of howlers and inconsistencies, and Sidgwick was too smart to fully embrace Consequentialism. All of these great traditions in moral philosophy express strands of our moral consciousness and they should all be treated as research programs rather than as fully determinate views that can be leveled by a counterexample or by a clever argument.”

WayShouldWritingPhilosophyViewsConsciousnessMoralSmartResearchProgramArgumentTraditionEmbraceCleverTreatedCrudeMillsTrinityStrandsInconsistencyMoral PhilosophyConsequentialism
Author:Dale Jamieson
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“I think moral philosophy is speculation on how we ought to live together done by people who have very little clue how people work. So I think most moral philosophy is disconnected from the species that we happen to be. In fact, they like it that way. Many moral philosophers insist that morality grows out of our rationality, that it applies to any rational being anywhere in the universe, and that it is not based on contingent or coincidental facts about our evolution.”

PeopleThinkingDonePhilosophyTogetherUniverseMoralEvolutionMoralityPhilosopherRationalRationalityClueSpeculationMoral Philosophy
Author:Jonathan Haidt
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“You do just have to go back to moral philosophy and you've got to say, okay, there is greed, people do want more and more, but then what restrains them and what restrained them in the past was a view of life in which one's satisfaction wasn't the most important thing, that you just, you needed enough and you could say, "Enough is enough." Maybe religion will get you there, maybe just classic moral philosophy, but you have to have some of that, or else you're always on the gravy train.”

PeopleImportantEnoughPhilosophyPastMoralOkayTrainGreedClassicMoral Philosophy
Author:Robert Skidelsky, Baron Skidelsky
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“I would say the 1980s, most importantly, there's been a witnessing of the bankruptcy of the liberal philosophy and the anti-moral and amoral philosophies that were so prevalent in the 1960s and '70s, the rebellion of young people, which brought about the drug epidemic in so many to break down the family. Particularly during this decade, the spiritual rebirth. I'm an evangelical, and I've watched the evangelical church here and around the world preaching Christ, the death, burial, resurrection of the savior, receiving more receptivity everywhere, and that growth.”

PeopleWorldPhilosophySpiritualGrowthChristChurchBreakDrugRebellionSaviorResurrectionPreachingBreaking DownRebirth1960sEvangelicalBankruptcyBurialMoral PhilosophyReceptivity
Author:Jerry Falwell
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“To be a good writer, you not only have to write a great deal but you have to care. You do not have to have a complicated moral philosophy. But a writer always tries, I think, to be a part of a solution, to understand a little about life and to pass this on.”

ThinkingWritingTryingLittlesPhilosophyCareDealsMoralSolutionsComplicatedGood WritersMoral Philosophy
Book:Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life
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“We need a moral philosophy which can speak significantly of Freud and Marx and out of which aesthetic and political views can be generated. We need a moral philosophy in which the concept of love, so rarely mentioned now, can once again be made central.”

NeedsMadePhilosophyPoliticalSpeakViewsMoralConceptsAestheticMoral PhilosophyPolitical ViewConcept Of Love
Book:Existentialists and Mystics: Writings on Philosophy and Literature
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“The bourgeoisie, which far surpasses the proletariat in the completeness and irreconcilibility of its class consciousness, is vitally interested in imposing its moral philosophy upon the exploited masses. It is exactly for this purpose that the concrete norms of the bourgeois catechism are concealed under moral abstractions...The appeal to abstract norms is not a disinterested philosophic mistake but a necessary element in the mechanics of class deception.”

PhilosophyPurposeMistakeConsciousnessMoralClassElementsMassAppealsDeceptionAbstractConcreteNormAbstractionMechanicConcealedBourgeoisImposingProletariatBourgeoisieCompletenessDisinterestedPhilosophicMoral PhilosophyCatechismClass Consciousness
Author:Leon Trotsky
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“The unexamined life is not worth living.”

LifeInspirationalPhilosophyMotivationalLife IsInspiringInspirational LifeLife PhilosophyReflectionDiscoveryPhilosophicalSelf AwarenessWho You ArePhilosopherSelf DiscoveryPsychologicalMeaning Of LifeThyselfSelf ReflectionWorth LivingKnow ThyselfExaminingLife Worth LivingAncient GreekPhilosophicGreek PhilosopherMoral PhilosophyLife Well LivedSelf-examinationLife Is Worth LivingNot Worth ItCool MotivationalLife Is Not Worth LivingJust Live Your LifeKnowing NothingJourney Of Self DiscoveryPhilosophy Of EducationLife Is Not EasyLiving Life WellSocraticDiscovery In LifeExamined LifeGreek PhilosophyShort Inspirational LifeUnexamined LifeWestern PhilosophyAncient Greek PhilosophersAncient PhilosophyI Know The TruthShort Motivational LifeGod Knows BestLiving RightlyKnowing MyselfOld GreekMost Philosophical
Author:Socrates
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“Moral philosophy is nothing else but the science of what is good, and evil, in the conversation, and society of mankind. Good, and evil, are names that signify our appetites, and aversions; which in different tempers, customs, and doctrines of men, are different.”

MenDifferentPhilosophyPoliticalEvilNamesMoralMankindMoralityConversationEthicsDoctrineGood And EvilCustomsAppetiteTemperAversionMoral PhilosophyLeviathan
Book:The Essential Leviathan: A Modernized Edition
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“All my life I've been aware of the Second World War humming in the background. I was born 10 years after it was finished, and without ever seeing it. It formed my generation and the world we lived in. I played Hurricanes and Spitfires in the playground, and war films still form the basis of all my moral philosophy. All the men I've ever got to my feet for or called sir had been in the war.”

MenWorldYearsStillsWarPhilosophyFilmFormBornMoralHistorySeeingGenerationsFeetHe ManBasesFinishedBackgroundsWar Of The WorldsHurricanesMy GenerationSecond World WarPlaygroundsHummingMoral Philosophy
Author:A. A. Gill
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“It should be apparent that the belief in objectivity in journalism, as in other professions, is not just a claim about what kind of knowledge is reliable. It is also a moral philosophy, a declaration of what kind of thinking one should engage in, in making moral decisions. It is, moreover, a political commitment, for it provides a guide to what groups one should acknowledge as relevant audiences for judging one's own thoughts and acts.”

ThinkingShouldKindPhilosophyPoliticalBeliefDecisionMoralAudienceGroupsJudgingCommitmentClaimsGuidesProfessionJournalismAcknowledgeRelevantDeclarationObjectivityMoral PhilosophyMoral Decisions
Book:Discovering The News: A Social History Of American Newspapers
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“Modern sociology is virtually an attempt to take up the larger program of social analysis and interpretation which was implicit in Adam Smith's moral philosophy, but which was suppressed for a century by prevailing interest in the technique of the production of wealth.”

PhilosophySocialInterestWealthMoralModernCenturyProgramProductionsTechniqueAnalysisInterpretationAdamSociologyPrevailingImplicitMoral Philosophy
Book:Adam Smith and Modern Sociology: A Study in the Methodology of the Social Sciences
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“Scientific theories never dictate human values, but they can often cast new light on ethical issues. From a sexual selection viewpoint, moral philosophy and political theory have mostly been attempts to shift male human sexual competitiveness from physical violence to the peaceful accumulation of wealth and status. The rights to life, liberty, and property are cultural inventions that function, in part, to keep males from killing and stealing from one another while they compete to attract sexual partners.”

HumansPhilosophyLightPoliticalValuesWealthLibertyMoralIssuesRightsViolenceTheoryFunctionPropertyMalesKillingCastsPartnersStealingInventionPeacefulEthicalSelectionAccumulationViewpointsHuman ValuesCompetitivenessScientific TheoryMoral PhilosophyPolitical TheoryPhysical ViolenceEthical IssuesRights To Life
Author:Geoffrey Miller
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“Don't Shoot is a work of moral philosophy that reads like a crime novel - Immanuel Kant meets Joseph Wambaugh. It's a fascinating, inspiring, and wonderfully well written story of one man's quest to solve a problem no one thought could be solved: the scourge of inner city gang violence This is a vitally important work that has the potential to usher in a new era in policing.”

MenWellsImportantPhilosophyStoriesProblemCitiesMoralNovelViolenceWrittenCrimeSolveErasFascinatingOne ManQuestsGangNew EraWell WrittenScourgeInner CityMoral PhilosophyImportant WorkCrime NovelsGang Violence
Author:John Seabrook
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