Sheryl WuDunn Quotes

At the descriptive level, certainly, you would expect different cultures to develop different sorts of ethics and obviously they have; that doesn't mean that you can't think of overarching ethical principles you would want people to follow in all kinds of places.

The idea of cultural relativism is nothing but an excuse to violate human rights.

There must be right and wrong answers to questions of morality and values that potentially fall within the purview of science. On this view, some people and cultures will be right (to a greater or lesser degree), and some will be wrong, with respect to what they deem important in life.

There are those who argue that the concept of human rights is not applicable to all cultures. We in the National League for Democracy believe that human rights are of universal relevance. But even those who do not believe in human rights must certainly agree that the rule of law is most important. Without the rule of law there can be no peace.

...discussing cultural relativism with cultural relativists is like playing tennis with some guy who says, "Your ace is just a social construct.

No great, inspiring culture of the future can be built upon the moral principle of relativism. For at its bottom such a culture holds that nothing is better than anything else, and that all things are in themselves equally meaningless. Except for the fragments of faith (in progress, in compassion, in conscience, in hope) to which it still clings, illegitimately, such a culture teaches every one of its children that life is a tale told by an idiot, signifying nothing.

Courtesy, modesty, good manners, conformity to definite ethical standards are universal, but what constitutes courtesy, modesty, good manners, and definite ethical standards is not universal. It is instructive to know that standards differ in the most unexpected ways.

If you depart from moral absolutes, you go into a bottomless pit. Communism and Nazism were catastrophic evils which both derived from moral relativism. Their differences were minor compared to their similarities.

All stealing is comparative. If you come to absolutes, pray who does not steal.

Moral precepts are constant through the ages and not obedient to circumstances.

The grand principles of virtue and honor, however they may be distorted by arbitrary codes, are the same the world over: and wherethese principles are concerned, the right or wrong of any action appears the same to the uncultivated as to the enlightened mind.

There are many religions, but there is only one morality.

They knew no better, but I do not propose to follow the example of a barbarian because he was honestly a barbarian.

Civilization is the way one's own people live. Savagery is the way foreigners live.

The highest virtue here may be least in another world.

I think a lot of the time people assume that their values are universal. And they don't understand which aspects of their values are actually universal and which aspects are very specific.

I don't want to live in a society that does these sort of things.

[Cultural relativism] licenses the envy of the untalented, giving rise to what has been called the revenge of failure: Those who cannot paint destroy the canons of painting; those who cannot write reject canonical literature.

Everyone gives the title of barbarism to everything that is not in use in his own country.

How are you going to teach virtue if you teach the relativity of all ethical ideas? Virtue, if it implies anything at all, implies an ethical absolute. A person whose idea of what is proper varies from day to day can be admired for his broadmindedness, but not for his virtue.

There is no story that is not true, [...] The world has no end, and what is good among one people is an abomination with others.

How many things both just and unjust are sanctioned by custom?

Forgive him, for he believes that the customs of his tribe are the laws of nature!

If there is no absolute by which to judge society, society is absolute.

Each man calls barbarism whatever is not his own practice; for indeed it seems we have no other test of truth and reason than the example and pattern of the opinions and customs of the country we live in