John Kenneth Galbraith Quotes

Conservatives are unashamed by self-interest and feel comfortable exercising power on their own behalf.

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

A coldly rationalist individualist can deny that he has any obligation to make sacrifices for the future.

There are a few dogmas and double standards and really regrettable exports from philosophy that have confounded the thinking of scientists on the subject of morality.

One has only as much morality as one has philosophy and poetry.

I had taken a course in Ethics. I read a thick textbook, heard the class discussions and came out of it saying I hadn't learned a thing I didn't know before about morals and what is right or wrong in human conduct.

A means can be justified only by its end. But the end in its turn needs to be justified.

The philosophical conservative is someone willing to pay the price of other people's suffering for his principles.

The moral cannibalism of all hedonist and altruist doctrines lies in the premise that the happiness of one man necessitates the injury of another.

The moral earth, too, is round! The moral earth, too, has its antipodes! The antipodes, too, have their right to exist! There is still another world to be discovered--and more than one! Set sail, you philosophers!

One’s concern with the ethics of means and ends varies inversely with one’s personal interest in the issue.

Self-interest, or rather self-love, or egoism, has been more plausibly substituted as the basis of morality.

The act of defending any of the cardinal virtues has today all the exhilaration of a vice.

Subordination to morality can be slavish or vain or self- interested or resigned or gloomily enthusiastic or thoughtless or an act of despair, just as subordination to a prince can be: in itself it is nothing moral.

Ethics is inescapable.

Morality is a mountain which we cannot climb by our own efforts; and if we could we should only perish in the ice and unbreathable air of the summit, lacking those wings with which the rest of the journey has to be accomplished. For it is from there that the real ascent begins. The ropes and axes are 'done away' and the rest is a matter of flying.

It is not contrary to reason to prefer the destruction of the whole world to the scratching of my finger. It is not contrary to reason for me to choose my total ruin, to prevent the least uneasiness of an Indian, or person wholly unknown to me. It is as little contrary to reason to prefer even my own acknowledged lesser good to my greater, and have a more ardent affection for the former than the latter.

In brief, egoism in its modern interpretation, is the antithesis, not of altruism, but of idealism.

My work is based on the assumption that clarity and consistency in our moral thinking is likely, in the long run, to lead us to hold better views on ethical issues.

Our moral traditions developed concurrently with our reason, not as its product.

The purpose of a moral philosophy is not to look delightfully strange and counterintuitive or to provide employment to bioethicists. The purpose is to guide our choices toward life, health, beauty, happiness, fun, laughter, challenge, and learning.

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.

The problem is that no ethical system has ever achieved consensus. Ethical systems are completely unlike mathematics or science. This is a source of concern.

Even at school I studied ethics instead of religion.

Of course, we are all egoists. Egoism is so much a part of our humanity.