Francis Schaeffer Quotes

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.

Either what we hold to be right and good and true IS right and good and true, for all mankind, or we're just another robber tribe.

If there is no absolute beyond man's ideas, then there is no final appeal to judge between individuals and groups whose moral judgments conflict. We are merely left with conflicting opinions.

If human values were relative, all laws-whether those based on revealed religions or those devised by man-would become meaningless.

All universal moral principles are idle fancies.

A system of morality which is based on relative emotional values is a mere illusion, a thoroughly vulgar conception which has nothing sound in it and nothing true.

Modern Americans suffer from a fear of judging. Passing judgment on the behavior of fellow human beings is considered an act of medieval, undemocratic intolerance.

We are coming out of a century that was taught that one way of looking at the world, that one form of behavior, is as valid as another. The idea of true evil has been blown away.

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.

I don't think that's healthy for the country when anyone thinks their morals are better than anyone else's.

If right were really right it would differ so clearly from not right that there would be no need for argument.

History requires us to judge the figures of the past not by our moral standards but by those of the ages in which they lived and worked.

Surely, nothing can be more dangerous than the doctrine that the moral obligations of men change with the latitude and longitude of a place.

These youngsters hold that all morality is relative but that middle class morality is just plain bad.

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

The laughter in response to my question unmasked the double standard our deconstructionists espouse. And that is precisely the double standard of atheism! It is possible to dress up and romanticize our bizarre experiments in social restructuring while disavowing truth or absolutes. But one dares not play such deadly games with the foundations of good thinking.

Atheists can be good people; they just have no objective way to judge the conduct of those who are not.

Those who have no absolute values cannot let the relative remain merely relative; they are always raising it to the level of the absolute.

The problem is that relativism provides no sure foundation for a safe and orderly society.

A great many of those who 'debunk' traditional...values have in the background values of their own which they believe to be immune from the debunking process.

We are now living in an age which doubts both fact and value. It is the life of this age that we wish to see and judge.

The problem is that it has become politically awkward to draw attention to absolutes of bad and good. In place of manners, we now have doctrines of political correctness, against which one offends at one's peril: by means of a considerable circular logic, such offences mark you as reactionary and therefore a bad person. Therefore if you say people are bad, you are bad.

Moral certainty is always a sign of cultural inferiority. The more uncivilized the man, the surer he is that he knows precisely what is right and what is wrong.