Steven Pinker Quotes

It is almost impossible systematically to constitute a natural moral law. Nature has no principles. She furnishes us with no reason to believe that human life is to be respected. Nature, in her indifference, makes no distinction between good and evil.

All universal moral principles are idle fancies.

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

There is no moral absolute, and this leads us to situational ethics, which unfortunately is being taught in public schools all over America. This means that right and wrong is dependent upon the circumstances.

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

If moral statements are about something, then the universe is not quite as science suggests it is, since physical theories, having said nothing about God, say nothing about right or wrong, good or bad. To admit this would force philosophers to confront the possibility that the physical sciences offer a grossly inadequate view of reality. And since philosophers very much wish to think of themselves as scientists, this would offer them an unattractive choice between changing their allegiances or accepting their irrelevance.

When I first started out, I thought it was enough to make an angry song that pointed out the problems of the world.

A system of morality which is based on relative emotional values is a mere illusion, a thoroughly vulgar conception which has nothing sound in it and nothing true.

There's no such thing as morality.

I think most of the art now is involved with a denial of any kind of absolute morality, or general morality.

I do not believe in the concept of good and evil in my personal life, in the real world. I just don't believe it. I never try to judge.

A new philosophy generally means in practice the praise of some old vice.

We are coming out of a century that was taught that one way of looking at the world, that one form of behavior, is as valid as another. The idea of true evil has been blown away.

I consistently encounter people in academic settings and scientists and journalists who feel that you can't say that anyone is wrong in any deep sense about morality, or with regard to what they value in life. I think this doubt about the application of science and reason to questions of value is really quite dangerous.

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.

Secularism has no central goal, it's just promoting endless relativism. That's why there is a huge moral drift in the country. Everybody is infallible except the Pope, if you like.

The feelings of the individual are the prime authority in ethics. 'If it feels good, do it' is the basic ethical ideal of humanism.

I don't believe in good people and bad people.

The world of empirical morality consists for the most part of nothing but ill will and envy.

In a world where everything is ridiculous, nothing can be ridiculed. You cannot unmask a mask.

If you do not take the distinction between good and bad very seriously, then it is easy to say that anything you find in this world is a part of God. But, of course, if you think some things really bad, and God really good, then you cannot talk like that. You must believe that God is separate from the world and that some of the things we see in it are contrary to His will.

If one starts with an impersonal beginning, the answer to morals eventually turns out to be the assertion that there are no morals.

Morality which is based on ideas, or on an ideal, is an unmitigated evil.

There is so much wrong with the world. (tanta stat praedita culpa)