Denis Diderot Quotes

You can't legislate morality.

Morality is a social necessity

Call me old-fashioned, but I believe that morality is not just a matter of opinion.

Modern morality is all about perception.

I think it is very difficult to legislate for morality.

I try not to do anything that's immoral.

Some things must be good in themselves, else there could be no measure whereby to lay out good and evil.

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

What we call “morals” is simply blind obedience to words of command.

Morals are in all countries the result of legislation and government.

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

Conscience has no more to do with gallantry than it has with politics.

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

Without ethics, man has no future. This is to say, mankind without them cannot be itself. Ethics determine choices and actions and suggest difficult priorities.

Morality is the herd-instinct in the individual.

No morality can be founded on authority, even if the authority were divine.

Ethics is a fluid term ...It's the standards by which a civilized society lives.

The foundations of morality are like all other foundations: If you dig too much about them, the superstructure will come tumbling down.

Nature has no principles. She furnishes us with no reason to believe that human life is to be respected. Nature, in her indifference, makes no distinction between good and evil.

Our moral philosophy determines our values - what we care about and what we don't care about - and our values determine our decisions, actions, and beliefs. Therefore, moral philosophy applies to everything in our lives.

One needs to know what is right and what is wrong.

Morality must relate, at some level, to the well-being of conscious creatures. If there are more and less effective ways for us to seek happiness and to avoid misery in this world - and there clearly are - then there are right and wrong answers to questions of morality.

I'm not any more moral than my neighbors.

If your morals make you dreary, depend on it, they are wrong.

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.