Voltaire Quotes

All universal moral principles are idle fancies.

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.

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.

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

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

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

Oh, I hate the cheap severity of abstract ethics!

Those who have no absolute values cannot let the relative remain merely relative; they are always raising it to the level of the absolute.

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.

I doubt not, but from self-evident Propositions, by necessary Consequences, as incontestable as those in Mathematics, the measures of right and wrong might be made out.

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

The rules of morality are not the conclusion of our reason.

Well, I believe in the idea of 'normal' in the way that I believe in the idea of logic. Or the idea of character. All of these ethical constructs are just that: constructs.

Call me old-fashioned, but I believe that morality is not just a matter of opinion.

It's simply untrue that religion provides the only framework for a universal morality.

At the descriptive level, certainly, you would expect different cultures to develop different sorts of ethics and obviously they have; that doesn't mean that you can't think of overarching ethical principles you would want people to follow in all kinds of places.

The fundamental basis of ethics must be chosen in some non-scientific way.

You cannot institute any equality between right and wrong.

Surely, nothing can be more dangerous than the doctrine that the moral obligations of men change with the latitude and longitude of a place.

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

I have never obtained any ethical values from my scientific work.

Right and wrong are not the product of census.

Morality is not defined and cannot be defined by individual choice.

Moral principles do not depend on a majority vote. Wrong is wrong, even if everybody is wrong. Right is right, even if nobody is right.

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.