David Novak Quotes

In the real world in which we live, you always have to choose between evils. And in choosing between evils, you have to have moral criteria for how to make those choices.

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

I wanted to play around with the format, really tear it to pieces and shake it up. For example, if Mitch saves someone from drowning, and that person then goes out and releases a virus that kills a million people. Imagine the moral implications of that.

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.

Thinking that morality is all about commandments is a relatively new way of thinking, since the Reformation.

The only objects of practical reason are therefore those of good and evil. For by the former is meant an object necessarily desired according to a principle of reason; by the latter one necessarily shunned, also according to a principle of reason.

That action is best which procures the greatest happiness for the greatest numbers.

If there is no God, the labels 'good' and 'evil' are merely opinions. They are substitutes for 'I like it' and 'I don't like it.' They are not objective realities.

Success is the sole earthly judge of right and wrong.

It may be necessary temporarily to accept a lesser evil, but one must never label a necessary evil as good.

I'm a Utilitarian, so I don't see the rule against lying as absolute; it's always subject to some overriding utility which may prevent its exercise.

To be a utilitarian means that you judge actions as right or wrong in accordance with whether they have good consequences. So you try to do what will have the best consequences for all of those affected.

How can an act done under compulsion have any moral element in it, seeing that what is moral is the free act of an intelligent being?

If the end does not justify the means - what can?

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.

Willing or preferring is the same with respect to good and evil, that judging is with respect to truth or falsehood.

One cannot prescribe to anyone whether he should follow an ethic of absolute ends or an ethic of responsibility.

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

Christian ethics are seldom found save in the philosophy of some unbeliever.

If the ends don't justify the means, what does?

Evil, as evil, can never be chosen; and though evil is often the effect of our own choice, yet we never desire it but under the appearance of an imaginary good.

The result justifies the deed.

Any humane and reasonable person must conclude that if the ends, however desireable, are uncertain and the means are horrible and certain, these means must not be employed.

It would be most right, and most wise, and, therefore must involve least suffering.

He uses common sense to judge not the intentions of an action but its consequences.