Richard Rohr Quotes

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

One of the great tragedies of mankind is that morality has been hijacked by religion.

Morality comes from humanism and is stolen by religion for its own purposes.

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

If your morals make you dreary, depend upon it they are wrong. I do not say "give them up," for they may be all you have; but conceal them like a vice, lest they should spoil the lives of better and simpler people.

Morality must always precede and accompany religion, and yet religion is much more than morality.

You can't slice up morals.

Never forget that there are only two philosophies to rule your life: the one of the cross, which starts with the fast and ends with the feast. The other of Satan, which starts with the feast and ends with the headache.

Right and wrong are not simply matters of evolutionary impacts and what is natural.

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

We see things like reciprocity which are fairly central to our view of ethics. But if you're talking about a set of worked-out rules on what we are supposed to do then, yes, it is a human product.

The difference between religion and morality lies simply in the classical division of things into the divine and the human, if one only interprets this correctly.

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.

The fundamental basis of ethics must be chosen in some non-scientific way.

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.

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.'

Morality is always derivative. It stems from one's worldview.

All things are moral; and in their boundless changes have an unceasing reference to spiritual nature.

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.

If the Coastal Republic had believed in the existence of virtue, it could at least have aspired to hypocrisy.

There are many religions, but there is only one morality.

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

Right and wrong are not the product of census.

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.