Adam Michnik Quotes

In the real world in which we live, you always have to choose between evils. And in choosing between evils, you have to have moral criteria for how to make those choices.

All moral laws are merely statements that certain kinds of actions will have good effects.

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.

Morality may consist solely in the courage of making a choice.

Though many have tried, no one has ever yet explained away the decisive fact that science, which can do so much, cannot decide what it ought to do.

Ethics is knowing the difference between what you have a right to do and what is right to do.

The ethic of conviction and the ethic of responsibility are not opposites. They are complementary to one another.

If the end does not justify the means, what does?

Everybody is grappling with their own moral compass, and that needle, like any needle, can't just stick. It's always floating a little bit, and depending on where you're standing, it's hard to read.

We can't make a decision based on PR value. We have to do what we think is right.

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.

There is nothing good or evil save in the will.

At the end of the day, if there are truly ethical considerations, those have to override scientific considerations.

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

They tend to be pretty abstract ones then, like doing what will have the best consequences; obviously you wouldn't specify what consequences are best, they may be different in some circumstances, so at a lower, more specific level, you may well get differences.

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?

An act has no ethical quality whatever unless it be chosen out of several all equally possible.

The imperative is to define what is right and do it.

There is nothing politically right that is morally wrong.

In any ethical situation, the thing you want least to do is probably the right action.

To prefer evil to good is not in human nature; and when a man is compelled to choose one of two evils, no one will choose the greater when he might have the less.

Each of us has a vision of good and of evil. We have to encourage people to move towards what they think is good... Everyone has his own idea of good and evil and must choose to follow the good and fight evil as he conceives them. That would be enough to make the world a better place.

Indeed, without emotion it seems unlikely we can even have morality.

I'm a Utilitarian, so I don't see the rule against lying as absolute; it's always subject to some overriding utility which may prevent its exercise.

I don't think any of us know how we would react until we were put in a situation where we have to do something bad or do something good. I think I'd like to believe I'd act like a decent human being, but I'm realistic to know I don't know.