Thomas Sowell Quotes

Morality is not merely different in different communities. Its level is not the same for all the component groups within the same community.

What is considered sinful in one of the great religions to which citizens belong isn't necessarily sinful in the others. Criminal law therefore cannot be based on the notion of sin …

It is not a single moral voice that is heard today but a chorus of voices. Each speaks to its own values but joins around a common article of faith: the belief that morality is better left to parents than to politicians.

I have no objection to the twist as such, but it does represent some kind of change of our standards. What has happened to our concepts of beauty, decency, and morality?

Bad taste is a species of bad morals.

His vices were the vices of his time and culture, but his virtues transcended the milieu of his life.

In logic, there are no morals.

Justice is the crowning glory of the virtues.

If all men were just there would be no need of valor.

One's sanctions for truth and goodness are established largely by individual preferences.

Tolerance cannot afford to have anything to do with the fallacy that evil may convert itself to good.

So our virtues lie in the interpretation of the time

Evil may be 'unscientific' but so is a song or a smile.

Justice-august and pure, the abstract idea of all that would be perfect in the spirits and the inspirations of men!-where the mind rises; where the heart expands; where the countenance is ever placid and benign; where her favorite attitude is to stoop to the unfortunate; to hear their cry and to help them; to rescue and relieve; to succor and save; majestic, from its mercy; venerable, from its Lutility; uplifted, without pride; firm without obduracy; beneficent in each preference; lovely, though in her frown!

America is just so weird in what they think is right and wrong. Like, I was watching 'Breaking Bad' the other day, and they were cooking meth. I could literally cook meth because of that show. It's a how-to. And then they bleeped out the word 'f__k'. And I'm like, really? They killed a guy, and disintegrated his body in acid, but you're not allowed to say 'f__k'? It's like when they bleeped 'molly' at the VMAs. Look what I'm doing up here right now, and you're going to bleep out 'molly'?

A just cause needs no interpreting. It carries its own case. But the unjust argument since it is sick, needs clever medicine.

Hardly a man in the world has an opinion upon morals, politics or religion which he got otherwise than through his associations and sympathies. Broadly speaking, there are none but corn-pone opinions. And broadly speaking, Corn-Pone stands for Self-Approval. Self-approval is acquired mainly from the approval of other people. The result is Conformity.

What is morality but immemorial custom? Conscience is the chief of conservatives.

How near to good is what is fair!

And don't tell me the end justifies the means because it doesn't. We never reach the end. All we ever get is means. That's what we live with.

Let them revere nothing but religion, morality and liberty.

Justice is the first virtue of social institutions, as truth is of systems of thought. A theory however elegant and economical must be rejected or revised if it is untrue; likewise laws and institutions no matter how efficient and well-arranged must be reformed or abolished if they are unjust.

What you think in your own mind to be good, or what people of the world think is good, is not necessarily good.

Unfortunately for the betterment of mankind it is not always the fair-minded who are in the right.

You can't slice up morals.