William James Quotes

This demand follows from an insight that I was the first to articulate: that there are no moral facts.

What is moral is what you feel good after, and what is immoral is what you feel bad after.

It is possible that the distinction between moral relativism and moral absolutism has sometimes been blurred because an excessively consistent practice of either leads to the same practical result — ruthlessness in political life.

Moral sensibilities are nowadays at such cross-purposes that to one man a morality is proved by its utility, while to another its utility refutes it.

Sin is a matter of opinion. Sins are only sins if you are hurting other people.

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.

Moral relativism has a reputation for being compassionate, caring and humane, but it is an extremely useful philosophy for tyrants.

Yet I have said over and over again that there is no "right" or "wrong" in the universe. A thing is not intrinsically right or wrong. A thing simply is.

Sin lies only in hurting others unnecessarily. All other "sins" are invented nonsense.

We are all creatures of our ancestry! There is no right and wrong, objectively.

Whatever peace I know rests in the natural world, in feeling myself a part of it, even in a small way.

Ethical metaphysics is fundamentally an attempt, however disguised, to give legislative force to our own wishes.

Whatsoever is the object of any man's Appetite or Desire; that is it which he for his part calleth Good: and the object of his Hate and Aversion, evil.

It's not given to people to judge what's right or wrong. People have eternally been mistaken and will be mistaken, and in nothing more than in what they consider right and wrong.

One's sanctions for truth and goodness are established largely by individual preferences.

In the state of nature, wrong-doing is impossible; or, if anyone does wrong, it is to himself, not to another. For no one by the law of nature is bound to please another, unless he chooses, nor to hold anything to be good or evil, but what he himself, according to his own temperament, pronounces to be so; and, to speak generally, nothing is forbidden by the law of nature, except what is beyond everyone's power.

It is sometimes rational to do what is wrong, and sometimes irrational to do what is right

Form is all we have to help us cope with fundamentally chaotic facts and assaults. Formulating something is a great start. I trust form, trust my feeling or capacity to find the right form for something. Even if that is only by being well organized. That too is form.

If it is solely an evolutionary convenience, there is really no such thing as good or evil.

Moral relativism says morality is relative, not absolute, I want to show moral relativism, in its popular form, is logically incoherent.

What is moral is what you feel good after.

Does Christ commend the famous 'apathy' of the Stoic or the Buddhist elimination of desire? Far from it. The issue is not just feeling or desire, but right feeling or desire, or being controlled by feeling or desire.

What goes on in the world and who's defining what is right or wrong in anything? Is there a place in any of our existence where we need judgment any longer? But we should have empathy towards each other and break away from those categories that politics and religion keep throwing back at us.

When you find out there is no ultimate good and evil in which you can place your faith, the world does not fall apart at the seams. It simply means that every decision is more difficult, more critical, because you are creating the good and evil yourself and they are very real.

The third rule of ethics of means and ends is that in war the end justifies almost any means.