Werner Herzog Quotes

A technical solution may be defined as one that requires a change only in the techniques of the natural sciences, demanding little or nothing in the way of change in human values or ideas of morality.

In some countries the effort to debate and legislate the social and ethical implications of the new biological and genetic technologies often precedes their application. This observation confirms the realization by the public that biotechnological applications will interfere with all the basic and profound value systems considered by every human being

Humanism involves far more than the negation of supernaturalism. It requires an affirmative philosophy . . . translated into a life devoted to one's own improvement and the service of all mankind.

Killing is unavoidable but is nothing to be proud of

Is everything right because the law allows it?

That is one of the Law's purposes, of course: to test the qualities of those who choose to employ it.

Nothing in Chomsky's account acknowledges the difference between intending to kill a child, because of the effect you hope to produce on its parents (we call this “terrorism”), and inadvertently killing a child in an attempt to capture or kill an avowed child murderer (we call this “collateral damage”). In both cases a child has died, and in both cases it is a tragedy. But the ethical status of the perpetrators, be they individuals or states, could not be more distinct For Chomsky, intentions do not seem to matter. Body count is all.

Love says respect the other as an end unto himself or herself; never use the other as a means. Nobody is a means for you, everybody is an end. But then ambition will flop, and our whole educational system depends on ambitiousness, our politics depends on ambition, our religions depend on ambition.

Civilization is that mode of conduct which points out to man the path of duty.

Computers are not good or bad; they are powerful.

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

In our way of working, we attach a great deal of importance to humility and honesty; With respect for human values, we promise to serve our customers with integrity.

That's the thing about a folk tale: It is always addressing incredibly key issues about how you should live and what the right thing to do is, which is really what I'm the most interested in - like the questions that religion takes on. And I think that, for those of us that aren't religious, we need, or I need, art that stimulates the same kind of thinking about what it is to be a mensch, or a good man, things like that.

No great question will ever be settled in dollars and cents. Great questions must be settled on moral grounds and the tests of what makes free men.

Humanity is lost because people have abandoned using their conscience as their compass.

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.

I found that the death penalty  -  and I'm not a hot-button issue person, you know, I'm not a single issue person  -  but what I think drew me to the death penalty is because it raises some very deep, fundamental questions like: Is anybody beyond redemption?

How much more precious is a little humanity than all the rules in the world.

Most people affirm pleasure to be the good, but the finer sort of wits say it is knowledge.

Science and technology are what we can do; morality is what we agree we should or should not do.

To vindicate the sanctity of human life by taking it is an outrage upon reason. The spectacle of a human being dangling at the end of a gallows-rope is a degradation of humanity.

The Pope appeals for disinterested solidarity and for a return to person-centred ethics in the world of finance and economics.

I am not promoting Buddhism. I am promoting human values.

The most valuable asset we have, actually, is our ability to understand, to do the right thing, to be kind, to be decent.