Moral Judgments Quotes

I am continually fascinated at the difficulty intelligent people have in distinguishing what is controversial from what is merely offensive.

If there is no absolute moral standard, then one cannot say in a final sense that anything is right or wrong. By absolute we mean that which always applies, that which provides a final or ultimate standard. There must be an absolute if there are to be morals, and there must be an absolute if there are to be real values. If there is no absolute beyond man's ideas, then there is no final appeal to judge between individuals and groups whose moral judgments conflict. We are merely left with conflicting opinions.

I'm very interested in why we do good things, or bad things, and where moral judgments come from.

There are a few dogmas and double standards and really regrettable exports from philosophy that have confounded the thinking of scientists on the subject of morality.

You cannot write about what people are really like without making a political adjudication. All our ideas of what human nature consists of or how people really feel and experience life are, at their base, political ideas.

Society will decide after the technology is created what we will and won't accept.

Morality covers our conduct, not what goes on inside our heads.

When people tell me to do a clean show, I'm like, 'Guys, I don't even understand your thoughts anymore.' What, you can't say a curse word? Nobody thinks that way!

Is it progress if a cannibal uses a fork?

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

Over the last few years, I've been focusing on questions having to do with the self, and questions having to do with morality. I'm very interested in why we do good things, or bad things, and where moral judgments come from.

All universal moral principles are idle fancies.

I'm interested in continuing our conversation about the discomfiture I picked up in the mainstream media with one particular element of this debate. It was this discomfort with a law against adultery.

Reporters tend to find in others what they are suited to find, so there is a whole school of reporting where they are cynical about the world, and everything reinforces that. Whereas I tend to be optimistic and be amused by people and like them, even rather bad people.

What is offensive is different for everyone.

In all good westerns, the good guy is always a little bit questionable because he kind-of has to make moral judgments.

Opinions upon moral questions are more often the expression of strongly felt expediency than of careful ethical reasoning

Things that used to be illicit are not illicit today. Licit products of yesterday, may be illicit today.

The repudiation of the primacy of understanding means the repudiation of the norms of judgment as well, and hence the abandonment of all ethical standards.

Society's mores have changed, and what used to be thought not to be cruel and unusual now is thought to be cruel and unusual.

I think ethics is always there; it's not always a very thoughtful or reflective ethics.

Religion and the traditions based on it were once the chief sources for moral confidence and strength. Their influence has faded in the modern world, but the need for a sound base for moral judgments has not. If we cannot look simply to moral guidance firmly founded on religious precepts it is natural and reasonable to turn to history, the record of human experience, as a necessary supplement if not a substitute.

Sex and drugs were simply not discussed in our culture at that time.

Jail sentences have many functions, but one is surely to send a message about what our society abhors and what it values. This week, the equation was twofold: female infidelity twice as bad as male abuse, the life of a woman half as valuable as that of a man. The killing of the woman taken in adultery has a long history and survives today in many cultures. One of those is our own.

The strongest feelings assigned to the conscience are not moral feelings at all; they express merely physical antipathies.