David Brooks Quotes

The general right of the whole decides what is good and what is evil

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

The so-called new morality is too often the old immorality condoned.

To claim that theft or adultery or lying are "evil" simply reflects our degraded idea of good-—that it has something to do with respect for property, respectability, and sincerity.

Were the judgments of mankind correct, custom would be regulated by the good. But it is often far otherwise in point of fact; for, whatever the many are seen to do, forthwith obtains the force of custom. But human affairs have scarcely ever been so happily constituted as that the better course pleased the greater number. Hence the private vices of the multitude have generally resulted in public error, or rather that common consent in vice which these worthy men would have to be law.

The stigma that was once attached to things society deemed unhealthy served the purpose of making them undesirable. With the stigma gone, many people see little reason not to do whatever feels good at the moment.

Modern morality is all about perception.

In a world where everyone is behaving honestly, any dishonesty constitutes a big infraction. But, in a world where many people are behaving dishonestly, and the news is filled with stories of their infractions, even big infractions can feel small to the perpetrator.

Our conscience is not the vessel of eternal verities. It grows with our social life, and a new social condition means a radical change in conscience.

Society is constantly recalibrating, redefining what it considers to be moral and immoral.

Regardless of what society says, we can't go on much longer in the sea of immorality without judgment coming.

Everything that used to be a sin is now a disease.

Morality is the custom of one's country and the current feeling of one's peers.

Men are more moral than they think and far more immoral than they can imagine.

Most of the vices and mortal sins condemned today correspond to inclinations that were purely adaptive or at least harmless in primitive man.

I didn't grow up with any concept of people being deviants unless they mistreated others.

We have defined decency down.

Good laws derive from evil habits.

Hypocrisy is a fearful evil, and every thing which has a tendency to produce it should be avoided.

Nature knows no indecencies; man invents them.

What is morality in any given time or place? It is what the majority then and there happen to like, and immorality is what they dislike.

The Internet has played a major role in undermining public morality.

People are less likely to think it's immoral to walk away from their home if they know others who have done so. And if enough people do it, the stigma begins to erode.

If you depart from moral absolutes, you go into a bottomless pit. Communism and Nazism were catastrophic evils which both derived from moral relativism. Their differences were minor compared to their similarities.

Fashions in sin change.