Bertrand Russell Quotes

Ethics is a code of values which guide our choices and actions and determine the purpose and course of our lives.

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

A different vision of ethics is that of a collection of resources people can use to act better. The resources might be firm rules that could always be relied on. Or they might be ideals that could often be followed without thinking but that sometimes conflicted with one another.

The content of scientific theory itself offers no moral foundation for the personal conduct of life.

He who defines his conduct by ethics imprisons his song-bird in a cage.

Ethics is inescapable.

Ethics, as has been well said, are the finest fruits of humanity, but they are not its roots

Morals - all correct moral laws - derive from the instinct to survive. Moral behavior is survival behavior above the individual level.

The very essence of our civilization is that we give a paramount place to morality in all our affairs, public or private.

I doubt not, but from self-evident Propositions, by necessary Consequences, as incontestable as those in Mathematics, the measures of right and wrong might be made out.

Morals were restrictive, but they were grounded on human experience.

Morality represents for everybody a thoroughly definite and ascertained idea: the idea of human conduct regulated in a certain manner.

I think ethics is always there; it's not always a very thoughtful or reflective ethics.

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

There are people who think that honesty is always the best policy. This is a superstition. There are times when the appearance of it is worth six of it.

I have never obtained any ethical values from my scientific work.

One of the great tragedies of mankind is that morality has been hijacked by religion.

Ethics may be defined as the obligations of morality.

In the past, the respect people had for religion meant that ethical practice was maintained through a majority following one religion or another. But this is no longer the case. We must therefore find some other way of establishing basic ethical principles.

There is no ethics in general. There are only-eventually-ethics of processes by which we treat the possibilities of a situation.

I once heard someone say morality was method. Do you hold with that? I suppose you wouldn't. You would say that morality was vested in the aim, I expect. Difficult to know what one's aims are, that's the trouble, specially if you're British.

He who would govern his actions by the laws of virtue must regulate his thoughts by those of reason.

Morality is the thing upon which your friends smile, and immorality is the thing upon which they frown

Morality is the Science of harmonious relations between intelligent beings.

Science can only ascertain what is, but not what should be, and outside of its domain value judgements of all kinds remain necessary.