Herbert Read Quotes

Morality, like language, is an invented structure for conserving and communicating order. And morality is learned, like language, by mimicking and remembering.

Retaliation is related to nature and instinct, not to law. Law, by definition, cannot obey the same rules as nature.

I think one of the most important directions to be pursued in the 'sciences of human action' is to develop a natural-law ethics based on nature rather than, or at least to supplement, ethics based on theological revelation.

The order of nature [is] that individual happiness shall be inseparable from the practice of virtue.

Thinking that morality is all about commandments is a relatively new way of thinking, since the Reformation.

The essence of morality is a questioning about morality; and the decisive move of human life is to use ceaselessly all light to look for the origin of the opposition between good and evil.

The moral virtues, then, are produced in us neither by nature nor against nature. Nature, indeed, prepares in us the ground for their reception, but their complete formation is the product of habit.

I do not want to suggest that you have to be religious to be moral.

If there is no God, the labels 'good' and 'evil' are merely opinions. They are substitutes for 'I like it' and 'I don't like it.' They are not objective realities.

The purpose of a moral philosophy is not to look delightfully strange and counterintuitive or to provide employment to bioethicists. The purpose is to guide our choices toward life, health, beauty, happiness, fun, laughter, challenge, and learning.

Morality is the herd-instinct in the individual.

Morality is a social necessity

All morality consists in a system of rules, and the essence of all morality is to be sought for in the respect which the individual acquires for these rules.

I don't believe that we evolved moral psychology; it just doesn't seem plausible to me as a biological phenomenon.

If you take a look at history, you will find that the understanding of what is good and evil has always existed before the individual religions. The religions were only invented by people afterwards, in order to express this idea.

Great parts produce great vices as well as virtues.

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.

Man is an animal with primary instincts of survival. Consequently his ingenuity has developed first and his soul afterwards. The progress of science is far ahead of man's ethical behavior.

Vices and virtues are of a strange nature, for the more we have, the fewer we think we have.

Conservatism, I believe, happens to be what happens when people behave according to a certain moral code, a certain sense of right and wrong, people that are accepting responsibility for themselves. Conservatism is what happens when you're a good citizen.

In spite of what moralists say, the, animals are scarcely less wicked or less unhappy than we are ourselves. The arrogance of the strong, the servility of the weak, low rapacity, ephemeral pleasure purchased by great effort, death preceded by long suffering, all belong to the animals as they do to men.

No one is born without vices, and he is the best man who is encumbered with the least.

The moral sense is the first excellence of well-organized man.

The great difficulty about keeping the Ten Commandments is that no man can keep them and be a gentleman.

I don't think goodness is something that you learn. If you're left adrift in the world to learn goodness from it, you would be in trouble.