George Burns Quotes

I would like us to think about it more explicitly, and not take our intuitions as the given of ethics, but rather to reflect on it, and be more open about the fact that something is an ethical issues and think what we ought to do about it.

Do you suppose that sacrifice is the hallmark of moral action?--Just stop to consider whether sacrifice is not involved in every action that is done with deliberation, the worst as well as the best.

The act of willing this or that, of choosing among various courses of conduct, is central in the realm of ethics.

It is seldom very hard to do one's duty when one knows what it is, but it is often exceedingly difficult to find this out.

doing what is right is easy. The problem is knowing what is right

Even if trolley problems were a realistic concern for AVs, it is not clear what, if anything, regulators or companies developing AVs should do about them. The trolley problem is an intensely debated thought experiment precisely because there isn't a consensus on what should be done.

In cases of doubtful morality, it is usual to say is there any harm in doing this? This question may sometimes be best answered by asking ourselves another; is there any harm in letting it alone?

This job of playing God is a little too big for me. Nevertheless, someone has to do it, so I'll try my best to fake it.

All pantheism must ultimately be shipwrecked on the inescapable demands of ethics, and then on the evil and suffering of the world. If the world is a theophany , then everything done by man, and even by animal, is equally divine and excellent; nothing can be more censurable and nothing more praiseworthy than anything else; hence there is no ethics.

I shook my head. “I don’t think so. This isn’t a good idea. This isn’t right.” “There’s all kinds of right,” he murmured. “On the spectrum, we’re still in the safe zone.” ... “Definitely right. Usually right,” Patch continued. “Mostly right. Maybe right.

What interest, zest, or excitement can there be in achieving the right way, unless we are enabled to feel that the wrong way is also a possible and a natural way, nay, more, a menacing and an imminent way? And what sense can there be in condemning ourselves for taking the wrong way, unless we need have done nothing of the sort, unless the right way was open to us as well? I cannot understand the willingness to act, no matter how we feel, without the belief that acts are really good and bad.

The Time Lords really didn't like genocide. I'm not too keen on it myself. It's the potential you're killing off. What if, one day, there was a good Dalek? What if...

Here in St. Cloud’s,” Dr. Larch wrote, “ I have been given the choice of playing God or leaving practically everything up to chance. It is my experience that practically everything is left up to chance much of the time; men who believe in good and evil, and who believe that good should win, should watch for those moments when it is possible to play God – we should seize those moments. There won’t be may

The right to do something doesn't mean it's the right thing to do.

As therefore the state of man now is, what wisdom can there be to choose, what continence to forbear, without the knowledge of good and evil?

Inability to tell good from evil is the greatest worry of man's life.

They are focused on whether they can do something. They never think whether they should do something.

I wanted to play around with the format, really tear it to pieces and shake it up. For example, if Mitch saves someone from drowning, and that person then goes out and releases a virus that kills a million people. Imagine the moral implications of that.

An act has no ethical quality whatever unless it be chosen out of several all equally possible.

To prefer evil to good is not in human nature; and when a man is compelled to choose one of two evils, no one will choose the greater when he might have the less.

Though many have tried, no one has ever yet explained away the decisive fact that science, which can do so much, cannot decide what it ought to do.

I don't think anyone sets out to do something bad, it's just that it's very difficult.

Must we always do our duty? If so, how are we always to know what is our duty?

Our moral philosophy determines our values - what we care about and what we don't care about - and our values determine our decisions, actions, and beliefs. Therefore, moral philosophy applies to everything in our lives.

Whether you do something or decide to do nothing, either way, you are making a moral choice. And I hope people make the right one.