Orson Scott Card Quotes

The problem is that no ethical system has ever achieved consensus. Ethical systems are completely unlike mathematics or science. This is a source of concern.

I think that moral philosophy is useful for framing questions, but terrible at answering them. I think moral psychology is booming right now, and we're making a lot of progress on understanding how we actually work, what our moral nature is.

Philosophy rests on a proposition that whatever is is right. Preaching begins by assuming that whatever is is wrong.

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

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.'

Moral philosophy is nothing else but the science of what is good, and evil, in the conversation, and society of mankind. Good, and evil, are names that signify our appetites, and aversions; which in different tempers, customs, and doctrines of men, are different.

I worry that when you start quoting Machiavelli to justify your actions, you have ceased to be one of the good guys. No, quoting Nietzsche does that. Machiavelli is just cool.

And what is good, Phaedrus, And what is not good— Need we ask anyone to tell us these things?

Why are we talking about this good and evil? They're just names for sides. We know that.

If goodness can't come from bad things, it makes bad things unbearable.

Philosophy is fundamentally about how you come to terms with living your life and trying to do it in a wise manner, and, for me, that means decently and compassionately and courageously and so forth.

Tolerance cannot afford to have anything to do with the fallacy that evil may convert itself to good.

Even if we can agree that some things are natural and some are not, what follows from this? The answer is: nothing. There is no factual reason to suppose that what is natural is good (or at least better) and what is unnatural is bad (or at least worse).

Moral relativism has a reputation for being compassionate, caring and humane, but it is an extremely useful philosophy for tyrants.

D'you know how embarrassing it is to mention good and evil in a scientific laboratory? Have you any idea? One of the reasons I became a scientist was not to have to think about that kind of thing.

It is good insofar as it is not evil.

There is no such thing as evil. Only relative degrees of good.

A categorical imperative would be one which represented an action as objectively necessary in itself, without reference to any other purpose.

If you're going to figure something out, study ethics. You can ask What's the answer? What's Right and Wrong? What I learned is that nobody knows the answer and there is no Right and Wrong. So I'm incapable of becoming a fundamentalist because there are no absolutes, there's always a what if.

Ethical and questions of philosophy interest me a great deal.

One has only as much morality as one has philosophy and poetry.

The end may justify the means as long as there is something that justifies the end.

I want people to come away from my book with questions. Questions about virtue and goodness. Not answers.

I had taken a course in Ethics. I read a thick textbook, heard the class discussions and came out of it saying I hadn't learned a thing I didn't know before about morals and what is right or wrong in human conduct.

One of the great questions of philosophy is, do we innately have morality, or do we get it from celestial dictation? A study of the Ten Commandments is a very good way of getting into and resolving that issue.