Competing Values Quotes

Pluralism is political polytheism…. a unitary society cannot assimilate a welter of competing, incommensurate moral claims.

Obviously, people have a lot of different dreams of where America should be, and where it should fit into things. Obviously, very few of them are compatible, and very few of them are very compatible with the laws of nature.

Fiction should be about moral dilemmas that are so bloody difficult that the author doesn't know the answer.

If I say that I am more interested in preventing the slaughter of large whales than I am in improving housing conditions for people, I am likely to shock some of my friends.

The most painful moral struggles are not those between good and evil, but between the good and the lesser good.

Well, my definition of a tragedy is a clash between right and right.

Tragedy, for me, is not a conflict between right and wrong, but between two different kinds of right.

Be these people either Conservatives or Socialists, Yellows or Reds, the most important thing is … that all of them are right in the plain and moral sense of the word... I ask whether it is not possible to see in the present social conflict of the world an analogous struggle between two, three, five equally serious verities and equally generous idealisms? I think it is possible, and that is the most dramatic element in modern civilization, that a human truth is opposed to another human truth no less human, ideal against ideal, positive worth against worth no less positive, instead of the struggle being as we are so often told, one between noble truth and vile selfish error.

Principles and rules are binding, but when they come into conflict they must be balanced.

Classical tragedy was the war between good and evil. We wanted evil to be defeated and good to be victorious. But the battle in modern tragedy is between good and good. And no matter which side wins, we'll still be heartbroken.

If I had a device, it would be the true, the true only, leaving the beautiful and the good to settle matters afterwards as best they could.

One interest must be opposed to another interest. Vices, as they exist, must be turned against each other.

Liberty and equality, spontaneity and security, happiness and knowledge, mercy and justice - all these are ultimate human values, sought for themselves alone; yet when they are incompatible, they cannot all be attained, choices must be made, sometimes tragic losses accepted in the pursuit of some preferred ultimate end.

Governing involves choosing and making choices between competing goods.

If speech always wins, even if it's an atomic secret that's going to be broadcast to our enemies, it's easy to make a decision. Speech always wins. But it doesn't... Liberty doesn't always trump equality or equality always trump liberty.

The Constitution is no simple contract, not because it uses a certain amount of open-ended language, but because its language grants and guarantees many good things, and good things that compete with each other and can never all be realized, altogether, all at once.

If you look at what the factors were going into the decision, of course there are competing interests and values. And one of our values is we bring everybody home off the battlefield the best we can. It doesn't matter how they ended up in a prisoner of war situation... It does not matter.