John Dewey Quotes

Because of the diverse conditions of humans, it happens that some acts are virtuous to some people, as appropriate and suitable to them, while the same acts are immoral for others, as inappropriate to them.

Many an act that man does is right or wrong according to the time and place which form, so to speak, its context; strip it of its surrounding circumstances, and you tear away its meaning. Gentlemen reformers, beware of this common practice of yours! Beware of calling an act evil on Tuesday because that same act was evil on Monday!

There are no principles; there are only events. There is no good and bad, there are only circumstances.

Circumstances dictate your set of values, your set of morals.

Virtue is relative to the actions and ages of each of us in all that we do.

I said all along I would not sell my story. I don't think it would be right.

When an action is once done, it is right or wrong for ever; no accidental failure of its good or evil fruits can possibly alter that.

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 …

Every time I have done things for political reasons, I have regretted it. Every time I have done what I thought was right, it has come out all right in the end.

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.

I share my personal experiences of what is right according to me in a particular situation.

I've never been a guy who plays the political game. It's either right or wrong; that's how I was raised.

[the virtues] cannot exist without Prudence. A proof of this is that everyone, even at the present day, in defining Virtue, after saying what disposition it is [i.e. moral virtue] and specifying the things with which it is concerned, adds that it is a disposition determined by the right principle; and the right principle is the principle determined by Prudence.

To be a fully functioning moral agent, one cannot passively accept moral principles handed down by fiat. Moral principles require moral reasoning.

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.

Everywhere there is one principle of justice, which is the interest of the stronger.

We may make mistakes-but they must never be mistakes which result from faintness of heart or abandonment of moral principle.

Unbounded morality ultimately becomes counterproductive even in terms of the same moral principles being sought. The law of diminishing returns applies to morality.

That which is wrong under one circumstance, may be, and often is, right under another. God said, 'Thou shalt not kill'; at another time He said, 'Thou shalt utterly destroy.' This is the principle on which the government of heaven is conducted—by revelation adapted to the circumstances in which the children of the kingdom are placed. Whatever God requires is right, no matter what it is, although we may not see the reason thereof till long after the events transpire.

I have no personal stake in these people, Jean-Claude, but they are people. Good, bad, or indifferent, they are alive, and no one has the right to just arbitrarily snuff them out.” "So it is the sanctity of life you cling to?" I nodded. “That and the fact that every human being is special. Every death is a loss of something precious and irreplaceable.

Philosophers and theologians have yet to learn that a physical fact is as sacred as a moral principle. Our own nature demands from us this double allegiance.

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

So far as he is able, a prince should stick to the path of good but, if the necessity arises, he should know how to follow evil.

Change a virtue in its circumstances find it becomes a vice; change a vice in its circumstances, and it becomes a virtue. Regard the same quality from two sides; on one it is a fault, on the other a merit. The essential of a man is found concealed far below these moral badges.

Now what is Judge Douglas Popular Sovereignty? It is, as a principle, no other than that, if one man chooses to make a slave of another man, neither that other man nor anybody else has a right to object.