ethical debates Quotes

The irrationality of disgust suggests it is unreliable as a source of moral insight. There may be good arguments against gay marriage, partial-birth abortions and human cloning, but the fact that some people find such acts to be disgusting should carry no weight.

The belief that value judgments are not subject, in the last analysis, to rational control, encourages the inclination to make irresponsible assertions regarding right and wrong or good and bad. One evades discussion of serious issues by the simple device of passing them off as value problems, whereas, to say the least, many of these conflicts arose out of man's very agreement regarding values.

Having been brought up among the biologists and having followed various debates about ways to improve the human template and other debates about the true nature of our nature, I began seriously to wonder: What if? We hold in our hands a tool that is more powerful - for good or ill - than any we have wielded before.

I just think that this whole issue of creating potential human life, not to give life, but to give the scientists a bit more of a leg-up, is fraught with danger.

There are lots of other issues in policy including the stem cell issue.

The ethical debates are like stones in a stream. The water runs around them. You haven't seen any biological technologies held up for one week by any of these debates.

[T]he visibility of styles is itself a product of historical consciousness. ... The very notion of "style" needs to be approached historically. Awareness of style as a problematic and isolable element in a work of art has emerged in the audience for art only at certain historical moments - as a front behind which other issues, ultimately ethical and political, are being debated.

Take it from me, whenever you see a bunch of buggers puttering around talking about truth and beauty and the best way of attacking Ethics, you can bet your sandals it's all because dozens of other poor buggers are doing all the real work around the place.

One of the biggest issues that we face is that we have people who have their own particular concerns, whether it's on abortion, birth control, divorce and remarriage, civil rights or social justice.

Some think there is something wrong about enhancing people.

Medical ethics is a fascinating discipline, as it deals with issues replete with complex philosophical, moral, and ethical considerations that are rarely black or white.

The Human Genome Project alone is the Full Employment Act for bioethicists.

The death penalty and the arguments it inspires don't only involve ethics, morals, and justice. There are bureaucratic and economic aspects to it as well. All these different aspects commingle in ways that convince me we should take whatever steps we can to abolish the death penalty.

Societies have debated the severity of punishment for vile acts over millennia, with complex moral arguments on both sides of the question. But citizens and society should pay more attention to the trend of over-criminalisation of common human failings and frailties.

I have always written about subjects that engage me - questions I can't answer myself. They apparently tend to be big moral and ethical issues!

I am pro-life, I believe in exceptions for rape, incest and the life of the mother. That's my position, take it or leave it.

Human passions against eternal laws -- that is the everlasting conflict.

Selfish hedonism is not a pejorative. It is a description - an exactly accurate description of what is involved in homosexual relations.

Whatever you think of de Sade, he was a complex figure and we should not look for easy answers with him. He was, strangely perhaps, against the death penalty, and he was never put in prison for murders or anything like that.