Richard Bach Quotes

Morals and criticism are not so properly objects of the understanding as of taste and sentiment.

Only on the assumption of belief in the validity of values is the attempt to espouse value-judgments meaningful. However, to judge the validity of such values is a matter of faith .

A value is valuable when the value of value is valuable to oneself.

Value-first is a perception. If your customer does not perceive it as value, then it's not very valuable.

There is no such thing as absolute value in this world. You can only estimate what a thing is worth to you.

What is right is not derived from the rule, but the rule arises from our knowledge of what is right

I never confuse the cost of something with its value

We evaluate the services that anyone renders to us according to the value he puts on them, not according to the value they have for us.

Your ideas about right and wrong are just that-ideas. They are the thoughts which form the shape and create the substance of Who You Are. There would be only one reason to change any of these; only one purpose in making an alteration: if you are not happy with Who You Are.

Men think they may justly do that for which they have a precedent.

Every act of every man is a moral act, to be tested by moral, and not by economic criteria.

What is aught but as 'tis valued?

As nobody can possibly tell me whether one's writing is bad or good, the only certain value is one's own pleasure. I am sure of that.

Value is not intrinsic, it is not in things. It is within us; it is the way in which man reacts to the conditions of his environment. Neither is value in words and doctrines, it is reflected in human conduct. It is not what a man or groups of men say about value that counts, but how they act.

An ethic isn't a fact you can look up. It's a way of thinking.

In philosophy class I think we finally decided that 'good' is an infinitely recursive term - it can't be defined except in terms of itself. Good is good because it's better than bad, though why it's better to be good than bad depends on how you define good, and on and on.

Only the skilled can judge the skillfulness, but that is not the same as judging the value of the result.

Little would be wanting to the happiness of life, if every man could conform to the right as soon as he was shown it.

When your principles seem to be demanding suicide, clearly it's time to check your premises

No path leads from a knowledge of that which is to that which should be.

The way things are does not determine the way they ought to be

Tis impossible to judge with much Præcision of the true Motives and Qualities of human Actions, or of the Propriety of Rules contrived to govern them, without considering with like Attention, all the Passions, Appetites, Affections in Nature from which they flow. An intimate Knowledge therefore of the intellectual and moral World is the sole foundation on which a stable structure of Knowledge can be erected.

At times the mirror increases a thing’s value, at times denies it.

Fools measure actions, after they are done, by the event; wise men beforehand, by the rules of reason and right. The former look to the end, to judge of the act. Let me look to the act, and leave the end with God.

If you ask me if I have this or that principle, tell me what its consequences are, and then I'll tell you whether I have that principle or not.