W. Somerset Maugham Quotes

The question of whether a thing is right or wrong, good or bad, must always be considered in relation to a persons needs.

Good and bad are but names very readily transferable to that or this.

One of the appeals of markets, as a public philosophy, is they seem to spare us the need to engage in public arguments about the meaning of goods. So markets seem to enable us to be non-judgmental about values. But I think that's a mistake.

I can discern that certain things have an effect on certain other things, but I don't view those effects as good or bad. If a context and a goal is defined, I could say if it's good or bad. But overall, I don't view things as good or bad.

No act is of itself either good or bad. Only its place in the order of things makes it good or bad.

There ain't no sin and there ain't no virtue. There's just stuff people do. It's all part of the same thing. And some of the things folks do is nice, and some ain't nice, but that's as far as any man got a right to say.

A thing is only right or wrong because you say it is. A thing is not right or wrong intrinsically.

To claim that theft or adultery or lying are "evil" simply reflects our degraded idea of good-—that it has something to do with respect for property, respectability, and sincerity.

It is generally understood that men don't aspire after the absolute right, but only to do about as well as the rest of the world.

What goes on in the world and who's defining what is right or wrong in anything? Is there a place in any of our existence where we need judgment any longer? But we should have empathy towards each other and break away from those categories that politics and religion keep throwing back at us.

There are neither good nor evil, only the existence and action.

There is no such thing as evil. Only relative degrees of good.

In philosophy class I think we finally decided that 'good' is an infinitely recursive term - it can't be defined except in terms of itself. Good is good because it's better than bad, though why it's better to be good than bad depends on how you define good, and on and on.

The whole world is incapable of judging either right or wrong. but it is certain that actionless action can judge both right and wrong.

Even if we can agree that some things are natural and some are not, what follows from this? The answer is: nothing. There is no factual reason to suppose that what is natural is good (or at least better) and what is unnatural is bad (or at least worse).

I hold that such a question can never arise except in a society of cannibals.

The problem is that it has become politically awkward to draw attention to absolutes of bad and good. In place of manners, we now have doctrines of political correctness, against which one offends at one's peril: by means of a considerable circular logic, such offences mark you as reactionary and therefore a bad person. Therefore if you say people are bad, you are bad.

There is a certain kind of morality which is even more alien to good and evil than amorality is.

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.

I cannot imagine any crime worse than taking a life, can you? -It'd depend whose life.

No path leads from a knowledge of that which is to that which should be.

We aren't the good guys, Anita. We're the necessary guys. -Edward

Nonjudgmentalism is not really nonjudgmental. It is the judgment that . . . everything is the same, nothing is better. This is as barbaric and untruthful a doctrine as has yet emerged from the fertile mind of man.

Courage is morally neutral.