Isaac Asimov 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.

Theories of "natural law" and the "law of nations" are another excellent example of discussions destitute of all exactness. [...] "Natural law" is simply that law of which the person using the phrase approves[....]

The atheist is cheating whenever he makes a moral judgment, acting as though it has an objective reference, when his philosophy in fact precludes it.

There is really no right and wrong. I recognize no right and wrong.

Are right and wrong convertible terms, dependant upon popular opinion?

I think morality is so individual and personal, and people draw their own lines of what that means for them.

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

The world of empirical morality consists for the most part of nothing but ill will and envy.

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

I want to give moral relativism the good spanking it deserves.

The funny thing was, you see, that Mike Fink didn't think of himself as a murderer. He thought of life as a contest, and dying was what happened to those who came out second best, but it wasn't the same as murder, it was a fair fight.

We believe there should be a huge area between everything you should do and everything you can do without getting into legal trouble. I don't think you should come anywhere near that line. We don't deserve much credit for this. It helps us make more money. I'd like to believe that we'd behave well even if it didn't work. But more often, we've made extra money from doing the right thing. Ben Franklin said I'm not moral because of it's the right thing to do - but because it's the best policy.

I think, like most people, my moral values tend to be pretty fuzzy.

Morality is not defined and cannot be defined by individual choice.

In a perfect world everything would be either black or white, right or wrong, and everyone would know the difference. But this isn't a perfect world. The problem is people who think it is.

Strictly speaking, there are no such things as good and bad impulses. Think...of a piano. It has not got two kinds of notes on it, the 'right' notes and the 'wrong' ones. Every single note is right at one time and wrong at another. The Moral Law is not any one instinct or set of instincts: it is something which makes a kind of tune (the tune we call goodness or right conduct) by directing the instincts.

Moral principles have lost their distinctiveness. For modern man, absolute right and absolute wrong are a matter of what the majority is doing.

Morality which is based on ideas, or on an ideal, is an unmitigated evil.

Whenever you find a man who says he does not believe in a real Right and Wrong, you will find the same man going back on this a moment later. He may break his promise to you, but if you try breaking one to him he will be complaining 'It's not fair' before you can say Jack Robinson.

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.

You cannot have a boundary-less existence, because your neighbor has his own boundaries, and who is going to give you the ethics between the two boundaries? If there is no objective moral law, relativism will take hold, and relativism ultimately will lead to self-destruction.

"I think we have different value systems." "Well, mine's better."

It's not given to people to judge what's right or wrong. People have eternally been mistaken and will be mistaken, and in nothing more than in what they consider right and wrong.

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.

Abstractions about right and wrong, whether they are as old as Thou Shalt Not Kill or as modern as Do Your Own Thing, often serve only to confuse and weaken genuine moral decision.