Timothy Radcliffe Quotes

If there is no God, the labels 'good' and 'evil' are merely opinions. They are substitutes for 'I like it' and 'I don't like it.' They are not objective realities.

Whenever morality is based on theology, whenever right is made dependent on divine authority, the most immoral, unjust, infamous things can be justified and established.

Christian ethics are seldom found save in the philosophy of some unbeliever.

I think one of the most important directions to be pursued in the 'sciences of human action' is to develop a natural-law ethics based on nature rather than, or at least to supplement, ethics based on theological revelation.

The feelings of the individual are the prime authority in ethics. 'If it feels good, do it' is the basic ethical ideal of humanism.

What would our world be like if we ceased to worry about 'right' and 'wrong,' or 'good' and 'evil,' and simply acted so as to maximize well-being, our own and that of others? Would we lose anything important?

I worry that when you start quoting Machiavelli to justify your actions, you have ceased to be one of the good guys. No, quoting Nietzsche does that. Machiavelli is just cool.

Religion is not just incongruent with morality, but in essential ways incompatible with it.

The mere abhorrence of vice is not a virtue at all.

Our judgements of good and evil ... presuppose God as the standard. If there's no God, there's neither good nor evil. There's just nature doing what it does

Christ could not create a codified 'Christian ethics'; such a thing would be a contradiction in terms.

There is no true and abiding morality that is not founded in religion.

The end never justifies the means because there is no end; there are only means.

Good works do not make a good man, but a good man does good works.

The essence of good and evil is a certain disposition of the will.

I am not advocating a morality based on evolution.

Those moralists, on the other hand, who, following in the footsteps of Socrates, offer the individual a morality of self-control and temperance as a means to his own advantage, as his personal key to happiness, are the exceptions.

I regard morality and ideology as the chief cause of human misery.

How does something immoral, when done privately, become moral when it is done collectively? Furthermore, does legality establish morality? Slavery was legal; apartheid is legal; Stalinist, Nazi, and Maoist purges were legal. Clearly, the fact of legality does not justify these crimes. Legality, alone, cannot be the talisman of moral people.

You can't slice up morals.

Good is that which promotes life, evil is that which destroys life

What is the highest good in all matters of action? To the name, there is almost complete agreement; for uneducated and educated alike call it happiness, and make happiness identical with the good life and successful living. They disagree, however, about the meaning of happiness.

No one has a right to happiness.

It is good insofar as it is not evil.

The fault of the utilitarian doctrine is that it mistakes impersonality for impartiality.