Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel Quotes

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

Our moral traditions developed concurrently with our reason, not as its product.

We become moral when we are unhappy.

I want people to come away from my book with questions. Questions about virtue and goodness. Not answers.

Ethics is nothing else than reverence for life.

If you do not know the laws of right conduct, you cannot form your character.

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

Morals are an acquirement -- like music, like a foreign language, like piety, poker, paralysis -- no man is born with them.

Our system of morals is a body of imperfect social generalizations expressed in terms of emotion.

Morality is the best of all devices for leading mankind by the nose.

That a science, which distinguishes the criterions of right and wrong; which teaches to establish the one, and prevent, punish, or redress the other; which employs in its theory the noblest faculties of the soul, and exerts in its practice the cardinal virtues of the heart; a science, which is universal in its use and extent, accommodated to each individual, yet comprehending the whole community; that a science like this should ever have been deemed unnecessary to be studied in an university, is matter of astonishment and concern.

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.'

Force cannot transmit a moral principle: moral ideas can be received only through the reason of the heart.

My parents are naive in their morality of things, and so, without realising it, I landed up being ethical and having strong opinions.

I think that moral philosophy is useful for framing questions, but terrible at answering them. I think moral psychology is booming right now, and we're making a lot of progress on understanding how we actually work, what our moral nature is.

The moral earth, too, is round! The moral earth, too, has its antipodes! The antipodes, too, have their right to exist! There is still another world to be discovered--and more than one! Set sail, you philosophers!

Every wicked man is in ignorance as to what he ought to do, and from what to abstain, and it is because of error such as this that men become unjust and, in a word, wicked.

All moral laws are merely statements that certain kinds of actions will have good effects.

The purpose of morality is to teach you, not to suffer and die, but to enjoy yourself and live.

There are a few dogmas and double standards and really regrettable exports from philosophy that have confounded the thinking of scientists on the subject of morality.

We have found that morals are not, like bacon, to be cured by hanging; nor, like wine, to be improved by sea voyages; nor, like honey, to be preserved in cells.

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

If you didn't have any conscious beings in the world, there really wouldn't be morality but with consciousness that you have it.

The endeavor to understand is the first and only basis of virtue.

Nothing has ever moulded our conscience so strongly as our knowledge of what is good and what is evil.