Walter E. Williams Quotes

The rules of morality are not the conclusion of our reason.

Morality is the thing upon which your friends smile, and immorality is the thing upon which they frown

Ethics is inescapable.

No one will dare maintain that it is better to do injustice than to bear it.

IMMORAL, adj. Inexpedient. Whatever in the long run and with regard to the greater number of instances men find to be generally inexpedient comes to be considered wrong, wicked, immoral.

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

The science of morality is about maximizing psychological and social health. It's really no more inflammatory than that.

There's a great deal of difference between thinking reflectively about moral issues and achieving higher standards of ethical behavior.

This could never be a crime in any society which deems itself enlightened.

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.'

A moral choice in its basic terms appears to be a choice that favors survival: a choice made in favor of life.

There can be no question of holding forth on ethics. I have seen people behave badly with great morality and I note every day that integrity has no need of rules

Had courage, wisdom, and reason always prevailed in people, there would not have been oppressions and oppressors.

Know that morality is a curb, not a spur.

But when the good people do know, as they certainly do, that three million persons (at the least estimate) were starved to death in one year by the methods they approve, why do they still fraternize with the murderers and support the measures? Because they have been told that the lingering death of the three millions might ultimately benefit a greater number. The argument applies equally well to cannibalism.

The end does not justify the means. No one's rights can be secured by the violation of the rights of others.

You know, there's a right and wrong way to do everything.

Ethics, as has been well said, are the finest fruits of humanity, but they are not its roots

How does something immoral, when done privately, become moral when it is done collectively? Furthermore, does legality establish morality? Slavery was legal; apartheid is legal; Stalinist, Nazi, and Maoist purges were legal. Clearly, the fact of legality does not justify these crimes. Legality, alone, cannot be the talisman of moral people.

Morals - all correct moral laws - derive from the instinct to survive. Moral behavior is survival behavior above the individual level.

The most important human endeavor is the striving for morality in our actions.

Science, by itself cannot, supply us with an ethic.

I doubt not, but from self-evident Propositions, by necessary Consequences, as incontestable as those in Mathematics, the measures of right and wrong might be made out.

Morals were restrictive, but they were grounded on human experience.

Morality, thou deadly bane,Thy tens o' thousands thou has slain!