Nathaniel Branden Quotes

Morality must relate, at some level, to the well-being of conscious creatures. If there are more and less effective ways for us to seek happiness and to avoid misery in this world - and there clearly are - then there are right and wrong answers to questions of morality.

Of moral purpose I see no trace in Nature. That is an article of exclusively human manufacture and very much to our credit.

Ordinary morality is innate in my view.

The repudiation of the primacy of understanding means the repudiation of the norms of judgment as well, and hence the abandonment of all ethical standards.

As for morality, well that's all tied up with the question of consciousness.

... common sense is very rare.

The inquiry, knowledge, and belief of truth is the sovereign good of human nature.

Skepticism's bad rap arises from the impression that, however necessary the activity, it can only be regarded as a negative removal of false claims. Not so... Proper debunking is done in the interest of an alternate model of explanation, not as a nihilistic exercise. The alternate model is rationality itself, tied to moral decency--the most powerful joint instrument for good that our planet has ever known.

People who cannot distinguish between good and bad language, or who regard the distinction as unimportant, are unlikely to think carefully about anything else.

The order of nature [is] that individual happiness shall be inseparable from the practice of virtue.

If the ability to tell right from wrong should have anything to do with the ability to think, then we must be able to 'demand' its exercise in every sane person no matter how erudite or ignorant.

If education is to develop human nature so that it may attain the object of its being, it must involve the exercise of judgment.

Man is the Reasoning Animal. Such is the claim. I think it is open to dispute.

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

All decision-making is a values-clarifying exercise.

All men have a reason, but not all men can give a reason.

Rationality will not save us.

Becoming fully rational is not enough anymore; evidently it can lead to distortions of all the great human possibilities.

People calculate too much and think too little.

Running! If there's any activity happier, more exhilarating, more nourishing to the imagination, I can't think of what it might be.

If American society wants to invest in its young people, it has an obligation to provide them with an education in which they are challenged, can learn to take risks, think outside the boundaries of established ideologies, and expand the far reaches of their creativity and critical judgment. This demands a pedagogy that is complicated, taxing and disruptive.

Man needs knowledge in order to survive, and only reason can achieve it; men who reject the responsibility of thought and reason, can exist only as parasites on the thinking of others.

These, then, are the two points I wanted to make. First, that human beings, all over the earth, have this curious idea that they ought to behave in a certain way, and cannot really get rid of it. Secondly, that they do not in fact behave in that way. They know the Law of Nature; they break it. These two facts are the foundation of all clear thinking about ourselves and the universe we live in.

You must first of all think justly. Don’t sit in judgment over others when you don’t know the truth of the matter.

To say a thing is natural is to condone it, never to praise it.