Rene Descartes Quotes

The content of scientific theory itself offers no moral foundation for the personal conduct of life.

Kant taught us that we should follow just those rules of conduct that we would want everybody to follow. Few find this generalization of The Golden Rule a great help.

Right and wrong as moral principles do not change. They are applicable and reliable determinants whether the situations with which we deal are simple or complicated. There is always a right and wrong to every question which requires our solution.

Really great moral teachers never do introduce new moralities: it is quacks and cranks who do that.

There is a universal moral law, as distinct from a moral code, which consists of certain statements of fact about the nature of man, and by behaving in conformity with which, man may enjoy his true freedom.

Fundamentally, the force that rules the world is conduct, whether it be moral or immoral. If it is moral, at least there may be hope for the world. If immoral, there is not only no hope, but no prospect of anything but destruction of all that has been accomplished during the last 5,000 years.

I think that ethical behaviour is another feature of the kind of inner discipline that leads to a happier existence.

Universal morality is to be found in little everyday penny-events just as much as in great ones.

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.

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

The hero can never be a relativist.

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.

Morality represents for everybody a thoroughly definite and ascertained idea: the idea of human conduct regulated in a certain manner.

Good is that which promotes life, evil is that which destroys life

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

Ethical inquiry has always been motivated by the aim of improving human conduct. It doesn't follow from that that the goal is to produce a complete rule book that would be applicable to all cases.

...virtue is not merely a state in conformity with the right principle, but one that implies the right principle; and the right principle in moral conduct is prudence.

We have our values from the church, the temple, the mosque. Do not rob, do not murder. But our behaviour changes the minute we go into the corporate place. Suddenly all of this is irrelevant.

Some authors regard morality in the same light as we regard modern architecture. Convenience is the first thing to be looked for.

Unless virtue guide us our choice must be wrong.

Religion is ethics heightened, enkindled, lit up by feeling

What is morality, she asked. Judgement to distinguish right and wrong, vision to see the truth, and courage to act upon it, dedication to that which is good, integrity to stand by the good at any price.

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

It's my opinion that every one I know has morals, though I wouldn't like to ask. I know I have. But I'd rather teach them than practice them any day. "Give them to others"-that's my motto.

No moral system can rest solely on authority.