Kant, as we all know, compared moral law to the starry heavens,
and found them both sublime. On the read more

Kant, as we all know, compared moral law to the starry heavens,
and found them both sublime. On the naturalistic hypothesis we
should rather compare it to the protective blotches on a beetle's
back, and find them both ingenious.

It is curious - curious that physical courage should be so common in the world, and moral courage so rare

It is curious - curious that physical courage should be so common in the world, and moral courage so rare

Morality without religion is only a kind of dead reckoning - an endeavor to find our place on a cloudy read more

Morality without religion is only a kind of dead reckoning - an endeavor to find our place on a cloudy sea by measuring the distance we have run, but without any observation of the heavenly bodies.

Moralizing and morals are two entirely different things and are always found in entirely different people.

Moralizing and morals are two entirely different things and are always found in entirely different people.

Ethics, too, are nothing but reverence for life. That is what gives me the fundamental principle of morality, namely, that read more

Ethics, too, are nothing but reverence for life. That is what gives me the fundamental principle of morality, namely, that good ;consists in maintaining, promoting, and enhancing life, and that destroying, injuring, and limiting life are evil.

Dr. Johnson's morality was as English an article as a beefsteak.

Dr. Johnson's morality was as English an article as a beefsteak.

An Englishman thinks he is moral when he is only uncomfortable.

An Englishman thinks he is moral when he is only uncomfortable.

When we start deceiving ourselves into thinking not that we want something or need something, not that it is a read more

When we start deceiving ourselves into thinking not that we want something or need something, not that it is a pragmatic necessity for us to have it, but that it is a moral imperative that we have it, then is when we join the fashionable madmen, and then is when the thin whine of hysteria is heard in the land, and then is when we are in bad trouble.

The disesteem into which moralists have fallen is due at bottom to their failure to see that in an age read more

The disesteem into which moralists have fallen is due at bottom to their failure to see that in an age like this one the function of the moralist is not to exhort men to be good but to elucidate what the good is. The problem of sanctions is secondary.