Ethical Reasoning Quotes

Laws must be justified by something more than the will of the majority. They must rest on the eternal foundation of righteousness.

There is no effective rational answer to the challenge: "But give me a reason why I should love someone who does not deserve it." Love is the highest thing. There can be no higher reason to justify it.

To do evil a human being must first of all believe that what he's doing is good, or else that it's a well-considered act in conformity with natural law. Fortunately, it is in the nature of the human being to seek a justification for his actions.

A lot of philosophy is bull***t, but a lot of it is what we write songs about too. And it's organizing your thoughts, organizing your intellect.

I must conclude that Conscience, if that be the name of it, was not given us for no purpose, or for a hindrance. However flattering order and expediency may look, it is but the repose of a lethargy, and we will choose rather to be awake, though it be stormy, and maintain ourselves on this earth, and in this life, as we may, without signing our death-warrant. Let us see if we cannot stay here, where He has put us, on his own conditions. Does not his law reach as far as his light? The expedients of the nations clash with one another: only the absolutely right is expedient for all.

The Catholic tradition maintains that the objective norms governing right action are accessible to reason, prescinding from the content of revelation.

There are two methods of human activity - and according to which one of these two kinds of activity people mainly follow, are there two kinds of people: One use their reason to learn what is good and what is bad and they act according to this knowledge; the other act as they want to and then they use their reason to prove that that which they did was good and that which they didn't do was bad.

It appears, then, that ethics, as a branch of knowledge, is nothing more than a department of psychologyand sociology.

Philosophy is such an impertinently litigious lady that a man had as good be engaged in lawsuits as have to do with her.

Being a professional philosopher is, I would say, feeling natural to think about small and great problems. It is the only pleasure.

I think we should really discourage this sort of empathic engagement when it comes to making moral decisions. I think we should focus on something like compassion, on getting people to care more for others without putting ourselves in their shoes.

It still remains true that no justification of virtue will enable a man to be virtuous.

But the nature of the universe is such that ends can never justify means. On the contrary, the means always determine the end.

Alasdair MacIntyre is one of the world's most influential living moral philosophers. He has written 30 books on ethics and held a variety of professorial chairs over the past four decades in North America.

Evil does exist in the world. A non-violent movement could not have halted Hitler's armies. Negotiations cannot convince al Qaeda's leaders to lay down their arms. To say that force may sometimes be necessary is not a call to cynicism - it is a recognition of history; the imperfections of man and the limits of reason.

When honor and the Law no longer stand on the same side of the line, how do we choose[?]

Education is the constraining and directing of youth towards that right reason, which the law affirms, and which the experience of the best of our elders has agreed to be truly right.

The fool who has not sense to discriminate between what is good and what is bad is well nigh as dangerous as the man who does discriminate and yet chooses the bad.

Thus does a 'necessary evil' become an idol. Maybe we're stuck with it. But do we have to worship it?

I never know why self-sacrifice is noble. Why is it better to sacrifice oneself than someone else?

God does not care what good you did, but why you did it. He does not grade the fruit but probes the core and tests the root.

If you would enjoy real freedom, you must be the slave of Philosophy.

I hear you reproach, "But delay was best, For their end was a crime." Oh, a crime will do As well, I reply, to serve for a test As a virtue golden through and through, Sufficient to vindicate itself And prove its worth at a moment's view! . . . . . . Let a man contend to the uttermost For his life's set prize, be it what it will! The counter our lovers staked was lost As surely as if it were lawful coin; And the sin I impute to each frustrate ghost Is-the unlit lamp and the ungirt loin, Though the end in sight was a vice, I say.

There must be a way of promoting human values without involving religion, based on common sense, experience and recent scientific findings.