Thomas Sowell Quotes

Relativity must replace absolutism in the realm of morals as well as in the spheres of physics and biology.

The principle that the end justifies the means is in individualist ethics regarded as the denial of all morals. In collectivist ethics it becomes necessarily the supreme rule.

Because of the diverse conditions of humans, it happens that some acts are virtuous to some individuals … while the same acts are immoral for others …

It is possible that the distinction between moral relativism and moral absolutism has sometimes been blurred because an excessively consistent practice of either leads to the same practical result — ruthlessness in political life.

There is no moral absolute, and this leads us to situational ethics, which unfortunately is being taught in public schools all over America. This means that right and wrong is dependent upon the circumstances.

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.

The morality of an act is a function of the state of the system at the time it is performed.

All universal moral principles are idle fancies.

A system of morality which is based on relative emotional values is a mere illusion, a thoroughly vulgar conception which has nothing sound in it and nothing true.

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

Are right and wrong convertible terms, dependant upon popular opinion?

I think you have to remember that Americans saw their purpose as so innately good that they could excuse the pain they would inflict on others to carry out those purposes. Because the purposes were so good, they would justify this pain we were inflicting on other people.

The end may justify the means as long as there is something that justifies the end.

Never let your sense of morals get in the way of doing what's right.

I had taken a course in Ethics. I read a thick textbook, heard the class discussions and came out of it saying I hadn't learned a thing I didn't know before about morals and what is right or wrong in human conduct.

If we don't believe in moral absolutes and then we get into a cultural-political debate, how are we going to win?

One cannot prescribe to anyone whether he should follow an ethic of absolute ends or an ethic of responsibility.

Truth is not half way between right and wrong;

Of God and Evil, there is nothing simply and absolutely so; nor any common Rule of Good and Evil, to be taken from the nature of the objects themselves.

One clings to principles for only as long as they are not put to the test. When that happens one throws them away as the peasant does his slippers.

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

I don't believe so much in good and evil.

I don't believe in good people and bad people.

Wrong does not cease to be wrong because the majority share in it.

Absolutely speaking, Do unto others as you would that they should do unto you is by no means a golden rule, but the best of current silver. An honest man would have but little occasion for it. It is golden not to have any rule at all in such a case.