Herbert Marcuse Quotes

There were certain questions about the foundations of morals that advances in science all threaten to make more complicated.

Right and wrong are not simply matters of evolutionary impacts and what is natural.

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.

They all deserve to die. Even you, Mrs. Lovett Even I. Because the lives of the wicked should be made brief For the rest of us death would be relief.

The whole world is incapable of judging either right or wrong. but it is certain that actionless action can judge both right and wrong.

I ought, or I ought not, constitute the whole of morality.

If some incarnation of evil as unambiguous as Hitler appeared again, I would have no moral qualms about killing the enemy. But in the modern world of moral murkiness, I prefer to keep my hands as clean of enemy blood as possible.

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

An opinion, right or wrong, can never constitute a moral offense, nor be in itself a moral obligation. It may be mistaken; it may involve an absurdity, or a contradiction. It is a truth; or it is an error: it can never be a crime or a virtue.

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

I don't know whether any religious leader would say that we must ultimately win, because we're on God's side. If they do say that, it's bad religion.

Morality is a luxury we can't afford out here. There's no right or wrong, just survival or death.

I can't explain the lack of integrity among some of the leaders of our health care facilities. This is something I rarely encountered during 38 years in uniform. And so I will not defend it because it is indefensible. But I can take responsibility for it and I do.

Wrong is wrong only when you are at liberty to choose.

There is no worse mistake in public leadership than to hold out false hope soon to be swept away.

Leaders, whether in the family, in business, in government, or in education, must not allow themselves to mistake intentions for accomplishments .

Evil prevails when good people do nothing.

A perverted moral judgment belongs to the dogmatic system.

And don't tell me the end justifies the means because it doesn't. We never reach the end. All we ever get is means. That's what we live with.

You think that you can judge what's good or evil from whether you enjoy doing it or not. You think that evil is what always appears in the form of a temptation, while good is what you never spontaneously want to do. I think this is all total rubbish, if you don't mind my saying so.

The good, we do it; the evil, that is fortune; man is always right, and destiny always wrong.

Abstractions about right and wrong, whether they are as old as Thou Shalt Not Kill or as modern as Do Your Own Thing, often serve only to confuse and weaken genuine moral decision.

Now what is Judge Douglas Popular Sovereignty? It is, as a principle, no other than that, if one man chooses to make a slave of another man, neither that other man nor anybody else has a right to object.

How does something immoral, when done privately, become moral when it is done collectively? Furthermore, does legality establish morality? Slavery was legal; apartheid is legal; Stalinist, Nazi, and Maoist purges were legal. Clearly, the fact of legality does not justify these crimes. Legality, alone, cannot be the talisman of moral people.

Might and right do differ frightfully from hour to hour, but then centuries to try it in, they are found to be identical.