Michael Shermer Quotes

The grand principles of virtue and honor, however they may be distorted by arbitrary codes, are the same the world over: and wherethese principles are concerned, the right or wrong of any action appears the same to the uncultivated as to the enlightened mind.

The more I thought about human nature, the more I saw how our tragic inclination for sin/mistakes causes us to use our minds to rationalize our action.

The denial of an objective moral law, based on the compulsion to deny the existence of God, results ultimately in the denial of evil iteself.

The absolute good is not a matter of opinion but of nature.

There being no absolute and universal standard of right, terrorism must be held to be wrong in every case.

You're trying to be tricky. What's morality?" "It's the difference between what's right and what you can rationalize." "Must be a human thing." "Exactly.

There is only one morality, as there is only one geometry.

We are very wrong to think that some fault or other can exclude virtue, or to consider the alliance of good and evil as a monstrosity or an enigma.

Hell is paved with good intentions, not with bad ones. All men mean well.

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.

Whenever you find a man who says he does not believe in a real Right and Wrong, you will find the same man going back on this a moment later. He may break his promise to you, but if you try breaking one to him he will be complaining 'It's not fair' before you can say Jack Robinson.

Multitudes think they like to do evil; yet no man ever really enjoyed doing evil since God made the world.

A German philosopher once wrote that he who fights monsters must take care that he doesn't become one himself.

For the real difference between humans and other animals is that humans alone have perception of good and evil, just and unjust, etc. It is the sharing of a common view in these matters that makes a household and a state.

Kill a man who needs killing, and sometimes others pay for it. The question is, was it worth doing it anyway? There's always a balance, you know. Good and evil. Light and Shadow. We would not be human if there wasn't a balance.

All men, in the abstract, are just and good; what hinders them, in the particular, is, the momentary predominance of the finite and individual over the general truth. The condition of our incarnation in a private self, seems to be, a perpetual tendency to prefer the private law, to obey the private impulse, to the exclusion of the law of the universal being.

The force of selfishness is as inevitable and as calculable as the force of gravitation.

Vice is man's nature: virtue is a habit--or a mask.

If we believe that murder is wrong and not admissible in our society, then it has to be wrong for everyone, not just individuals but governments as well.

The balance between good and evil, and the choices we make between them, are probably the single most important aspects shaping our personalities and humanity.

At the core of every moral code there is a picture of human nature, a map of the universe, and a version of history. To human nature (of the sort conceived), in a universe (of the kind imagined), after a history (so understood), the rules of the code apply.

Either what we hold to be right and good and true IS right and good and true, for all mankind, or we're just another robber tribe.

Moral relativism has a reputation for being compassionate, caring and humane, but it is an extremely useful philosophy for tyrants.

With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.

I think the human race needs to think about killing. How much evil must we do to do good?