Richard M. Weaver Quotes

The problem of good as it faces the atheist is this: Nature, which is the nuts-and-bolts reality for the atheist, has no values and thus can offer no grounding for good and evil. Values on the atheist view are subjective and contingent.

I want to give moral relativism the good spanking it deserves.

We should challenge the relativism that tells us there is no right or wrong, when every instinct of our mind knows it is not so, and is a mere excuse to allow us to indulge in what we believe we can get away with. A world without values quickly becomes a world without value.

Moral relativism says morality is relative, not absolute, I want to show moral relativism, in its popular form, is logically incoherent.

All universal moral principles are idle fancies.

Right is right, even if everyone is against it, and wrong is wrong, even if everyone is for it.

Nothing is sacred, right?

I am certainly not an intellectual relativist, nor a moral relativist.

I don't believe that there are two sides to a story when it's a matter of right versus wrong. It just doesn't work that way.

Morality is always derivative. It stems from one's worldview.

There are many religions, but there is only one morality.

Right and wrong are not the product of census.

An e-mail from a reader says that liberals like to take the moral high ground, even though their own moral relativism means that there is no moral high ground.

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

How are you going to teach virtue if you teach the relativity of all ethical ideas? Virtue, if it implies anything at all, implies an ethical absolute. A person whose idea of what is proper varies from day to day can be admired for his broadmindedness, but not for his virtue.

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.

I think in general the ends do not justify the means.

Renunciation is the very basis upon which ethics stands. There never was an ethical code preached which had not renunciation for its basis.

You can't slice up morals.

You can't have a Superman that is battling cultural morality. You need a Superman that has built in sort of values.

There is no principle worth the name if it is not wholly good.

But I think it is a serious issue to wonder about the other platonic absolutes of say beauty and morality.

Morality without religion is only a kind of dead reckoning - an endeavor to find our place on a cloudy sea by measuring the distance we have run, but without any observation of the heavenly bodies.

I think evil is very relative.