Ellen Goodman Quotes

What we think is ethical today, we may not have thought ethical five or 10 years ago. Cloning, stem cell research? However we feel about those things today, we may feel differently 10 years from now.

A hundred years ago Hester Prynne of The Scarlet Letter was given an A for adultery; today she would rate no better than a C-plus.

What's vice today may be virtue, tomorrow.

This society in which we live is radically changing. What previous generations saw as evil is now embraced as being good. It is a dangerous and slippery slope upon which we stand when we reject what Solomon called the beginning of wisdom - the fear of God.

Society is constantly recalibrating, redefining what it considers to be moral and immoral.

If we don't believe in moral absolutes and then we get into a cultural-political debate, how are we going to win?

Human nature is not black and white but black and grey.

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.

Surely, nothing can be more dangerous than the doctrine that the moral obligations of men change with the latitude and longitude of a place.

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

What bothers me most about today is that we're getting used 2 it. ENOUGH. 2nd amendment must go. Violence has 2 stop. Culture MUST change.

The Death of the contemporary forms of social order ought to gladden rather than trouble the soul. Yet what is frightening is that the departing world leaves behind it not an heir, but a pregnant widow. Between the death of the one and the birth of the other, much water will flow by, a long night of chaos and desolation will pass.

I think we live in a period of profound transformation. Very similar to when we had a transition from agricultural societies to industrial societies.

The traditional churches are having to transition into new methodologies and new ways of reaching people and they are starting to understand that and looking for ways they can increase their relevance to the contemporary society.

I wonder whether our adoption of Shrink-ese as a second language, the move from religious phrases of judgment to secular words of acceptance, hasn't also produced a moral lobotomy. In the reluctance, the aversion to being judgmental, are we disabled from making any judgments at all?

That's a chapter - the last chapter - of the 20th ... 20th ... the 21st century that most of us would rather forget. The last chapter of the 20th century. This is the first chapter of the 21st century.

The ideas of right and wrong change with the experience of the race, and this change is wrought by the gradual ascertaining of consequences - of results.

I was a blacksmith's boy but yesterday; I am - what shall I say I am today?

Whatever God felt about anything, He still feels. Whatever He thought about anyone, He still thinks. Whatever He approved, He still approves. Whatever He condemned, He still condemns. Today we have what they call the relativity of morals. But remember this God never changes. Holiness and righteousness are conformity to the will of God. And the will of God never changes for moral creatures.

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.

Tolerance becomes a crime when applied to evil.

Today's unspeakable perversion is tomorrow's kink, is next week's good clean fun

A decline in courage may be the most striking feature that an outside observer notices in the West today.

The tradition of the new. Yesterday's avant-gard-experiment is today's chic and tomorrow's cliche.

There is sort of a continuing problem of putting a moral template on the future that is based on the morality of today.