C. S. Lewis Quotes

The absolute good is not a matter of opinion but of nature.

I think a lot of people in America do not understand that the basis of true liberty can't happen without an objective moral standard by which we live our lives.

Some things must be good in themselves, else there could be no measure whereby to lay out good and evil.

I want to give moral relativism the good spanking it deserves.

We should challenge the relativism that tells us there is no right or wrong, when every instinct of our mind knows it is not so, and is a mere excuse to allow us to indulge in what we believe we can get away with. A world without values quickly becomes a world without value.

It's hard to explain," said Brutha. "But I think it's got something to do with how people should behave... you should do things because they're right. Not because gods say so. They might say something different another time.

Whenever you find a man who says he does not believe in a real Right and Wrong, you will find the same man going back on this a moment later. He may break his promise to you, but if you try breaking one to him he will be complaining 'It's not fair' before you can say Jack Robinson.

How are you going to teach virtue if you teach the relativity of all ethical ideas? Virtue, if it implies anything at all, implies an ethical absolute. A person whose idea of what is proper varies from day to day can be admired for his broadmindedness, but not for his virtue.

I don't subscribe to relativism, whether it's in political philosophy, foreign policy or in life.

But let us emphasize that right and wrong, righteousness and sin, are not dependent upon man's interpretations, conventions and attitudes. Social acceptance does not change the status of an act, making wrong into right. If all the people in the world were to accept homosexuality, the practice would still be a deep, dark sin.

Justness exists, even if few people exist who feel it.

Moral principles do not depend on a majority vote. Wrong is wrong, even if everybody is wrong. Right is right, even if nobody is right.

No man in the world acts up to his own standard of right.

I think I've been very consistent in my values.

Moral principles have lost their distinctiveness. For modern man, absolute right and absolute wrong are a matter of what the majority is doing.

When all has been considered, it seems to me to be the irresistible intuition that infinite punishment for finite sin would be unjust, and therefore wrong. We feel that even weak and erring Man would shrink from such an act. And we cannot conceive of God as acting on a lower standard of right and wrong.

I think the ethical standards established in this White House have been the highest in the history of the White House.

Gore Vidal said "Nixon is us, we are Nixon." I think we have to acknowledge that combination of idealism and sleaze; we want to be better than we are, and we sometimes don't face up to the real questions.

There is only one morality, as there is only one geometry.

Vladimir Putin is the bigger danger than Donald Trump because Trump can be dealt with within American democracy. There is an independent judiciary. He cannot overrule American courts. He will have to play by some rules. He will do damage certainly, but to do real damage I think he is too weak. Putin is aggressive wherever he can be. In Europe, in Germany, Putin will not stop.

You cannot have a boundary-less existence, because your neighbor has his own boundaries, and who is going to give you the ethics between the two boundaries? If there is no objective moral law, relativism will take hold, and relativism ultimately will lead to self-destruction.

I should think myself a very bad woman, if I had done what I do for a farthing less.

The denial of an objective moral law, based on the compulsion to deny the existence of God, results ultimately in the denial of evil iteself.

We should not allow our personal values to erode, even if others think we are peculiar.

I think values are really, really important, but I also think that too many values are just words.