Joseph Addison Quotes

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

Morality must relate, at some level, to the well-being of conscious creatures. If there are more and less effective ways for us to seek happiness and to avoid misery in this world - and there clearly are - then there are right and wrong answers to questions of morality.

Right and wrong are not simply matters of evolutionary impacts and what is natural.

If you didn't have any conscious beings in the world, there really wouldn't be morality but with consciousness that you have it.

Ordinary morality is innate in my view.

People want to know if I have a moral standpoint that they should be picking up on, and the truth is, I don't. I don't want people to think that I'm trying to tell them to feel a certain way. I think that's cheap filmmaking.

There is no system that is inherently moral if the participants themselves are not.

Some things must be good in themselves, else there could be no measure whereby to lay out good and evil.

Now here is a departure from the first principle of true ethics. Here we find ideas of moral wrong and moral right associated with something else than beneficial action. The consequent is, we lose sight of the real basis of morals, and substitute a false one.

No morality can be founded on authority, even if the authority were divine.

What we call “morals” is simply blind obedience to words of command.

Of moral purpose I see no trace in Nature. That is an article of exclusively human manufacture and very much to our credit.

Fear is the mother of morality.

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

If we say that anyone who 'moralizes' must be perfect morally then we are in effect saying no one can moralize.

In ethics, there is a humility; moralists are usually righteous.

Is there one specific source that determines correct morality and everybody should follow that? Or should individuals come up with following that source or not depending on their situation?

I think it is very difficult to legislate for morality.

Without ethics, man has no future. This is to say, mankind without them cannot be itself. Ethics determine choices and actions and suggest difficult priorities.

Morality is the weakness of the brain.

What a man calls his 'conscience' is merely the mental action that follows a sentimental reaction after too much wine or love.

At times, morality can be dismissed as a matter of personal conscience, no matter how widespread its acceptance. Ethics, on the other hand, arises from societal or group commitments to principia of behavior.

Morals are in all countries the result of legislation and government; they are not African or Asian or European: they are good or bad.

It may not have the virtuous ring of the golden rule, but the maxim 'never say never' is one of the most important in ethics.

We see things like reciprocity which are fairly central to our view of ethics. But if you're talking about a set of worked-out rules on what we are supposed to do then, yes, it is a human product.