Brian Reynolds Myers Quotes

An education which does not teach us to discriminate between good and bad, to assimilate the one and eschew the other, is a misnomer

The function of wisdom is to discriminate between good and evil.

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.

To be moral involves taking a position towards that matrix, thinking critically about what is taken for granted.

Sinners often speak the truth. And saints have led people astray. Examine what is said, not the one who says it.

I think people have common sense and can tell what's real, what's right or what's wrong and work it out.

If the ability to tell right from wrong should have anything to do with the ability to think, then we must be able to 'demand' its exercise in every sane person no matter how erudite or ignorant.

People need to be educated so that they can make intelligent moral choices

You have to understand the good in things, to detect the real evil.

An ethic isn't a fact you can look up. It's a way of thinking.

Compassion without wisdom is dangerous. It's what enables people to support the 'underdog,' even if the underdog is evil

To say a thing is natural is to condone it, never to praise it.

This inability to think created the possibility for many ordinary men to commit evil deeds on a gigantic scale, the like of which had never been seen before. The manifestation of the wind of thought is not knowledge but the ability to tell right from wrong, beautiful from ugly. And I hope that thinking gives people the strength to prevent catastrophes in these rare moments when the chips are down.

Sin is a matter of opinion. Sins are only sins if you are hurting other people.

I certainly know the difference between right and wrong.

I can only say that, while my own opinions as to ethics do not satisfy me, other people's satisfy me still less.

Sin has always been an ugly word, but it has been made so in a new sense over the last half-century. It has been made not only ugly but pass?. People are no longer sinful, they are only immature or underprivileged or frightened or, more particularly, sick.

Real music lovers are actually my favourite kind of people because they like to know, rather than just be told what to think.

And what is good, Phaedrus, And what is not good— Need we ask anyone to tell us these things?

You've got to love what's lovable, and hate what's hateable. It takes brains to see the difference.

We decide what is right. Never mind what the people think.

Common sense doesn't have the last word in ethics or anywhere else, but it has, as J. L. Austin said about ordinary language, the first word: it should be examined before it is discarded.

If he does really think that there is no distinction between virtue and vice, why, sir, when he leaves our houses let us count our spoons.

Whatsoever is the object of any man's Appetite or Desire; that is it which he for his part calleth Good: and the object of his Hate and Aversion, evil.