Robert Reich Quotes

There is nothing politically right that is morally wrong.

To deny the freedom of the will is to make morality impossible.

It seems that if you put people on paper and move them through time, you cannot help but talk about ethics, because the ethical realm exists nowhere if not here: in the consequences of human actions as they unfold in time, and the multiple interpretive possibility of those actions.

If you say morality is just what you like, you lose the metaphysical level of what in the history of philosophy is called 'categorical imperative.'

We are all ready to be savage in some cause. The difference between a good man and a bad one is the choice of the cause.

Morality without religion is only a kind of dead reckoning - an endeavor to find our place on a cloudy sea by measuring the distance we have run, but without any observation of the heavenly bodies.

I think evil is very relative.

Your political views really denote your spiritual views.

Relationships do not preclude issues of morality.

Whether gods exist or not, there is no way to get absolute certainty about ethics. Without absolute certainty, what do we do? We do the best we can.

There is no right in acting.

As for morality, well that's all tied up with the question of consciousness.

Every judgement of conscience, be it right or wrong, be it about things evil in themselves or morally indifferent, is obligatory, in such wise that he who acts against his conscience always sins.

Economics is built on the assumption of scarcity. Therefore, it deals with values and calculations. It cannot seek the good that fits a specific person within a given human condition. Where scarcity rules, ethics is reduced to numbers and utility. Further, the person engaged in the manipulation of mathematical formulas loses his or her ear for ethical nuance; one becomes morally deaf.

What is done cannot be effaced. We have to act upon a moral field prepared for us ...

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

In every generation good men have been perplexed by the paradoxical relation between moral and economic values.

The ideologue says “whatever is right works.” The pragmatist says “whatever works is right.”

Many a dormant moral issue is brought to life by economic pressure.

The ends do not justify the means. The means are the ends.

If the Soviet Government orders me to act against my conscience, I do not obey …. Conscience is above the law. No law which is against the conscience can bind.

Our moral philosophy determines our values - what we care about and what we don't care about - and our values determine our decisions, actions, and beliefs. Therefore, moral philosophy applies to everything in our lives.

It's important though to distinguish between religion and spirituality.

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

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.