Paul Bloom Quotes

I'm very interested in why we do good things, or bad things, and where moral judgments come from.

One becomes moral as soon as one is unhappy.

The virtues and vices are all put in motion by interest.

Men are guided less by conscience than by glory; and yet the shortest way to glory is to be guided by conscience.

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

As to ethics, unfortunately, we are still at sea. We never did have any popular base for what little ethics we knew, except the religious theories, and now that our faith is shaken in those theories we cannot account for ethics at all. It is no wonder we behave badly, we are literally ignorant of the laws of ethics, which is the simplest of sciences, the most necessary, the most continuously needed. The childish misconduct of our 'revolted youth' is quite equaled by that of older people, and neither young nor old seem to have any understanding of the reasons why conduct is 'good' or 'bad.

Man is not equally moral at all hours, this is well known. If his morality is judged to be the capability for great self-sacrificing resolutions and self-denial (which, when continuous and grown habitual, are called holiness)

...virtue is not merely a state in conformity with the right principle, but one that implies the right principle; and the right principle in moral conduct is prudence.

If one is not virtuous he becomes vicious.

Do people get moral when they don't get ahead?

We become moral when we are unhappy.

The science of morality is about maximizing psychological and social health. It's really no more inflammatory than that.

It is by doing good that we become good.

And one of the elders of the city , said , speak to us of good and evil. And he answered : You are good in countless ways , and you are not evil when you are not good .

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.

That which is selfish is immoral, and that which is unselfish is moral.

It's a moral question.

When, in the present world, men behave well, that is no doubt sometimes because they are creatures of habit as well as, sometimes, because they are reasonable.

If reason dominates in man, he rises higher than angels. If lust overpowers man, he descends lower than the beast.

Moralism doesn't produce morality; it produces immorality.

That we occasionally violate our own stated moral code does not imply that we are insincere in espousing that code.

You can't be right by doing wrong; you can't be wrong by doing right.

Philosophy is fundamentally about how you come to terms with living your life and trying to do it in a wise manner, and, for me, that means decently and compassionately and courageously and so forth.

An educated person must learn to act justly, beginning, first of all, with his thoughts, then later in his deeds. That is what it means to be educated.

Too great a preoccupation with motives (especially one's own motive) is liable to lead to too little concern for consequences.