Ayaan Hirsi Ali Quotes

A categorical imperative would be one which represented an action as objectively necessary in itself, without reference to any other purpose.

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.'

Behaving morally because of a hope of reward or a fear of punishment is not morality. Morality is not bribery or threats. Religion is bribery and threats. Humans have morality. We don't need religion.

Every judgement of conscience, be it right or wrong, be it about things evil in themselves or morally indifferent, is obligatory, in such wise that he who acts against his conscience always sins.

If the Soviet Government orders me to act against my conscience, I do not obey …. Conscience is above the law. No law which is against the conscience can bind.

There were certain questions about the foundations of morals that advances in science all threaten to make more complicated.

What can I know? What ought I to do? What can I hope?

May you live your life as if the maxim of your actions were to become universal law.

Never let your sense of morals get in the way of doing what's right.

It may not have the virtuous ring of the golden rule, but the maxim 'never say never' is one of the most important in ethics.

I would like us to think about it more explicitly, and not take our intuitions as the given of ethics, but rather to reflect on it, and be more open about the fact that something is an ethical issues and think what we ought to do about it.

One of the great questions of philosophy is, do we innately have morality, or do we get it from celestial dictation? A study of the Ten Commandments is a very good way of getting into and resolving that issue.

To deny the freedom of the will is to make morality impossible.

If you know something is morally reprehensible, then it is your moral obligation to stop it as soon as possible.

How can an act done under compulsion have any moral element in it, seeing that what is moral is the free act of an intelligent being?

I have learned that a clear conscience, or a legal opinion, does not make you ethically bullet proof.

Conscience is known to be adequate in individuals; in large numbers little is to be expected of it.

doing what is right is easy. The problem is knowing what is right

The more...we consider man to be free, the less we can say, that he can neglect to use reason, or choose evil in preference to good

More important than your obligation to follow your conscience, or at least prior to it, is your obligation to form your conscience correctly.

The only obligation which I have a right to assume is to do at any time what I think right.

Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.

Conscience is the reason employed about questions of right and wrong.

Act so that the maxim of your act could be made the principle of a universal law.