Ethical Relativism Quotes

The cult of moral grayness is a revolt against moral values.

I don't apologize for my behavior anymore. Whatever I do or don't do shouldn't matter. Moral certainty is dangerous. Moral certainty is what makes people go to war unnecessarily and illegally. Morality, as any halfway intelligent human being would tell you, is a very subjective thing.

There's no good guys and bad guys.

Politics can be relatively fair in the breathing spaces of history; at its critical turning points there is no other rule possible than the old one, that the end justifies the means.

When it is impossible to stretch the very elastic threads of historical ratiocination any farther, when actions are clearly contrary to all that humanity calls right or even just, the historians produce a saving conception of 'greatness.' 'Greatness,' it seems, excludes the standards of right and wrong. For the 'great' man nothing is wrong, there is no atrocity for which a 'great' man can be blamed.

Those who have no absolute values cannot let the relative remain merely relative; they are always raising it to the level of the absolute.

You'll see certain Pythagorean whose belief in communism of property goes to such lengths that they pick up anything lying about unguarded, and make off with it without a qualm of conscience as if it had come to them by law.

Evil is a point of view.

If there is no absolute moral standard, then one cannot say in a final sense that anything is right or wrong. By absolute we mean that which always applies, that which provides a final or ultimate standard. There must be an absolute if there are to be morals, and there must be an absolute if there are to be real values. If there is no absolute beyond man's ideas, then there is no final appeal to judge between individuals and groups whose moral judgments conflict. We are merely left with conflicting opinions.

I love the gray area between right and wrong.

Most relativists believe that relativism is absolutely true and that everyone should be a relativist. Therin lies the self-destructive nature of relativism. The relativist stands on the pinnacle of an absolute truth and wants to relativize everything else.

Imperfect men have no right to judge other imperfect men.

There is no such thing as justice or injustice among those beasts that cannot make agreements not to injure or be injured. This is also true of those tribes that are unable or unwilling to make agreements not to injure or be injured.

If we are allowed to do experiments on monkeys because we are superior to them in a certain way, then someone who is superior to me is allowed to do experiments on me.

The laws of Nature, that is to say the laws of God, plainly made every human being a law unto himself, we must steadfastly refuse to obey those laws, and we must as steadfastly stand by the conventions which ignore them, since the statutes furnish us peace, fairly good government, and stability, and therefore are better for us than the laws of God, which would soon plunge us into confusion and disorder and anarchy if we should adopt them.

not judging truth to be in nature better than falsehood, but setting a value upon both according to interest.

No one is moral among the god-controlled puppets of the _Iliad_. Good and evil do not exist.

Most crimes are sanctioned in some form or other when they take grand names.

If there is no absolute beyond man's ideas, then there is no final appeal to judge between individuals and groups whose moral judgments conflict. We are merely left with conflicting opinions.

Good or bad is a matter of perspective. I met an immortal hunami once, a man called William Shakespeare, who wrote that there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.

I contend that the ethos of perpetual non-judgment is intellectually dishonest if not outright cowardly.

I do not hold with those who think it is all right to do whatever you want so long as it doesn't hurt anyone. Who's to be the judge of that?

Justice is nothing more than the advantage of the stronger.

In argument about moral problems, relativism is the first refuge of the scoundrel.

There was no more good or evil in this world than we imagine there to be, either out of greed or out of innocence. Or sometimes madness.