William McNamara Quotes

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

Some things must be good in themselves, else there could be no measure whereby to lay out good and evil.

No morality can be founded on authority, even if the authority were divine.

Morality rests upon a sense of obligation; and obligation has no meaning except as implying a Divine command, without which it would cease to be.

There were certain questions about the foundations of morals that advances in science all threaten to make more complicated.

Greatness is not manifested by unlimited pragmatism, which places such a high premium on the end justifying any means and any methods.

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

Call me old-fashioned, but I believe that morality is not just a matter of opinion.

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

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.

Enhanced interrogation is not to be considered lightly, but the use of enhanced interrogation techniques does not require moral people to abandon their beliefs. Rather, it is precisely during these difficult times that one's beliefs about life, justice and mercy become indispensible.

Moral choices do not depend on personal preference and private decision but on right reason and, I would add, divine order.

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.

A means can be justified only by its end. But the end in its turn needs to be justified.

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

Opinions upon moral questions are more often the expression of strongly felt expediency than of careful ethical reasoning

Kant taught us that we should follow just those rules of conduct that we would want everybody to follow. Few find this generalization of The Golden Rule a great help.

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.'

I'm not a moral relativist, I do think at the end of the day there's right and wrong, there's good intentions, and then there's bad paths that you can go on even if you have good intentions and we believe that.

Stern daughter of the voice of God! O Duty! if that name thou love Who art a light to guide, a rod To check the erring and reprove.

It's hard to explain," said Brutha. "But I think it's got something to do with how people should behave... you should do things because they're right. Not because gods say so. They might say something different another time.

There are moments in Life when keeping silent becomes a fault, and speaking an obligation. A civic duty, a moral challenge, a categorical imperative from which we cannot escape.

Tis certain that Morality is an indispensable Requisite of true Religion, and there can be none without it. But it would become the Pride and Ignorance of Pagans only, to magnify it, as the Whole of what is necessary.

Know that morality is a curb, not a spur.

Suicide is not abominable because God prohibits it; God prohibits it because it is abominable.