Tom Stoppard Quotes

The moral sense is as much a part of our constitution as that of feeling, seeing, or hearing.

The science of morality is about maximizing psychological and social health. It's really no more inflammatory than that.

There's a great deal of difference between thinking reflectively about moral issues and achieving higher standards of ethical behavior.

Morality is not just any old topic in psychology but close to our conception of the meaning of life. Moral goodness is what gives each of us the sense that we are worthy human beings.

Education is the art of making man ethical.

I think that moral philosophy is useful for framing questions, but terrible at answering them. I think moral psychology is booming right now, and we're making a lot of progress on understanding how we actually work, what our moral nature is.

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

The rules of morality are not the conclusion of our reason.

Our moral traditions developed concurrently with our reason, not as its product.

A moral being is one who is capable of reflecting on his past actions and their motives - of approving of some and disapproving of others.

The essence of morality is a questioning about morality; and the decisive move of human life is to use ceaselessly all light to look for the origin of the opposition between good and evil.

If you do not know the laws of right conduct, you cannot form your character.

We are naturally moral beings, but our environments can enhance - or, sadly, degrade - this innate moral sense.

Morality, like language, is an invented structure for conserving and communicating order. And morality is learned, like language, by mimicking and remembering.

One has only as much morality as one has philosophy and poetry.

The endeavor to understand is the first and only basis of virtue.

A man is not good or bad for one action.

Human models are more vivid and more persuasive than explicit moral commands.

Evil is the product of the ability of humans to make abstract that which is concrete.

We should reserve the notion of 'morality' for the ways in which we can affect one another's experience for better or worse. Some people use the term 'morality' differently, of course, but I think we have a scientific responsibility to focus the conversation so as to make it most useful.

Morality is a social necessity

Basic moral values must therefore first be internalized in the hearts and minds of its people before we can hope to enforce legislation reflecting these values

The notion of humans as inherently rational beings has been not only trashed in economics, but trashed in all the best research on moral decision-making.

I firmly believe there are no bad people.

My parents are naive in their morality of things, and so, without realising it, I landed up being ethical and having strong opinions.