Thomas Hobbes Quotes

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.

I can only say that, while my own opinions as to ethics do not satisfy me, other people's satisfy me still less.

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

You can't slice up morals.

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

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.'

All good moral philosophy is ... but the handmaid to religion.

The principles of ethics come from our own nature as social, reasoning beings.

Ethics occupies a central place in philosophy because it is concerned with sin, with the origin of good and evil and with moral valuations. And since these problems have a universal significance, the sphere of ethics is wider than is generally supposed. It deals with meaning and value and its province is the world in which the distinction between good and evil is drawn, evaluations are made and meaning is sought.

What is the real relation between happiness and goodness? It is only within a few generations that men have found courage to say that there is none.

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

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

One’s concern with the ethics of means and ends varies inversely with one’s personal interest in the issue.

Morality is either a social contract or you have to pay cash.

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

Those sciences which govern the morals of mankind, such as Theology and Philosophy, make everything their concern: no activity is so private or so secret as to escape their attention or their jurisdiction.

Morality, then, is not a set of arbitrary regulations dictated by a vengeful deity and written down in a book; nor is it the custom of a particular culture or tribe. It is a consequence of the interchangeability of perspectives and the opportunity the world provides for positive-sum games.

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.

I conceive ethics as a branch of psychology.

Good and evil are essential differences of the act of the will. For good and evil pertain essentially to the will; just as truth and falsehood pertain to the reason, the act of which is distinguished essentially by the difference of truth and falsehood (according as we say that an opinion is true or false.) Consequently, good and evil volition are acts differing in species.

Conscience and cowardice are really the same things, Basil. Conscience is the trade-name of the firm. That is all.

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

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.

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.

Attempts to construct an ethic from the rules of evolution, or from psychology and sociology, end up being simply inadequate.