Rick Yancey Quotes

All serious conversations gravitate towards philosophy.

What can I know? What ought I to do? What can I hope?

Wisdom is a kind of knowledge. It is knowledge of the nature, career, and consequences of human values.

Whether gods exist or not, there is no way to get absolute certainty about ethics. Without absolute certainty, what do we do? We do the best we can.

Without philosophy man cannot know what he makes; without religion he cannot know why.

To deny the freedom of the will is to make morality impossible.

First, philosophy concerns itself with all kinds of issues that don't get much airtime in day-to-day life. What's the nature of reality? Can we ever truly know anything, and if so, how? What does it mean to be a moral agent? And while we're at it, is there any such thing as agency anyway?

It seems that if you put people on paper and move them through time, you cannot help but talk about ethics, because the ethical realm exists nowhere if not here: in the consequences of human actions as they unfold in time, and the multiple interpretive possibility of those actions.

A good physician goes to be helpful where there is most sickness. So a good philosopher should be where there is most stupidity

I think that it is morally wrong to be an economic determinist.

The ends do not justify the means. The means are the ends.

If the Soviet Government orders me to act against my conscience, I do not obey …. Conscience is above the law. No law which is against the conscience can bind.

If you say morality is just what you like, you lose the metaphysical level of what in the history of philosophy is called 'categorical imperative.'

Philosophy, to be relevant, must offer us a wisdom to live by.

The Gay Science, section 108

At this point we find ourselves confronted by a very disquieting question: Do we really wish to act upon our knowledge?

Knowledge is power. Power to do evil...or power to do good. Power itself is not evil. So knowledge itself is not evil.

Morality is a luxury we can't afford out here. There's no right or wrong, just survival or death.

Wrong is wrong only when you are at liberty to choose.

To extinguish the free will is to strike the conscience with death, for both have but one and the same life.

In order to be true to one's conscience and true to God, a righteous man has no alternative but to refuse to cooperate with an evil system.

Tolerance becomes a crime when applied to evil.

Men of the world who value the Way all turn to books. But books are nothing more than words. Words have value; what is of value in words is meaning. Meaning has something it is pursuing, but the thing that it is pursuing cannot be put into words and handed down. The world values words and hands down books but, though the world values them, I do not think them worth valuing. What the world takes to be values is not real value.

There's no free will," says the philosopher; "To hang is most unjust." "There is no free will," assents the officer; "We hang because we must.

I'm not saying you did the wrong thing. I'm not even saying it wasn't something I'd thought of doing, myself. But even if it was the just thing to do, or the fitting thing, it still wasn't the right thing.