Max Lerner Quotes

Principles do not mainly influence even the principled; we talk on principle, but we act on interest.

One’s concern with the ethics of means and ends varies inversely with one’s personal interest in the issue.

The end does not justify the means. No one's rights can be secured by the violation of the rights of others.

Managers can sometimes hold players back for their own benefit.

It's more important to do the right thing than to do things right.

To do injustice is more disgraceful than to suffer it.

That which is selfish is immoral, and that which is unselfish is moral.

I have never made it a consideration whether the subject was popular or unpopular, but whether it was right or wrong; for that which is right will become popular, and that which is wrong, though by mistake it may obtain the cry or fashion of the day, will soon lose the power of delusion, and sink into disesteem.

Whenever there is a conflict between universal principles and self-interest, self-interest is likely to prevail.

Strength and success; they are above morality, above criticism. It seems then, that it is not what you do, but how you do it and what you call it.

Ethics, as has been well said, are the finest fruits of humanity, but they are not its roots

Privileged people don't march and protest; their world is safe and clean and governed by laws designed to keep them happy.

Legality alone is no guide for a moral people. There are many things in this world that have been, or are, legal but clearly immoral. Slavery was legal. Did that make it moral? South Africa’s apartheid, Nazi persecution of Jews, and Stalinist and Maoist purges were all legal, but did that make them moral?

Acts which are essentially dishonourable must not be done; they would be justified only by calm contemplation of their correctness in abstract cases.

Do we always make our freedom out of someone else's bondage?

Most people don't have any association in their minds with what they do and with ethics. They think they somehow moved past the questions of morality or values or ethics, and that's something that I've never imagined to be true.

What I really want to write about is injustice and justice, and the different ways human beings organize the two.

We cannot rebuild the American Dream here at home by catering to the voices of the privileged and powerful.

Moral indignation has a way of obscuring sober reasoning, and those who speak of privilege are often primed (by professors, peers, and media) to actively seek out moral transgressions. As such, many backwards beliefs and harmful attitudes have found a toehold amongst “privileged” millennials, who presume their views to be self-evidently righteous and thus not up for debate. Many of these views, were they to become widespread, would lead to the destruction of the privileges that we in the developed world are so fortunate to enjoy. These include free expression, freedom of the press, freedom of peaceful assembly, the rule of law, and ongoing efforts to judge people not by their phenotype but rather by their actions.

I only aim at the powerful. When satire is aimed at the powerless, it is not only cruel - it's vulgar.

America has the laws and the material resources it takes to insure justice for all its people. What it lacks is the heart, the humanity, the Christian love that it would take.

The Achilles' heel of the left has been its dependence on menace for power. Think of all the things it can ask for in the name of fighting menaces like 'systemic racism' and 'structural inequality.'

If you care about other people, you might try to organize to undermine power and authority. That's not going to happen if you care only about yourself.

I'm really bothered by questions of humanity, questions of war, questions of slavery.

If we support human rights, we cannot ignore legalized brutality against any group of our global community.