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.
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The moral system of the universe is like a document written in
alternate ciphers, which change from line to read more
The moral system of the universe is like a document written in
alternate ciphers, which change from line to line.
All sects are different, because they come from men; morality is everywhere the same, because it comes from God.
All sects are different, because they come from men; morality is everywhere the same, because it comes from God.
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.
What I have absolutely no sympathy with is the legislator, the man who seeks, for his own profit, to exploit read more
What I have absolutely no sympathy with is the legislator, the man who seeks, for his own profit, to exploit the weaknesses of those who are unable to help themselves and then to fasten some moral superscription upon it. This I loathe so much that I cannot conceivably explain how much it is.
The word morality, if we met it in the Bible, would surprise us
as much as the word telephone read more
The word morality, if we met it in the Bible, would surprise us
as much as the word telephone or motor car.
To denounce moralizing out of hand is to pronounce a moral judgment.
To denounce moralizing out of hand is to pronounce a moral judgment.
To be ashamed of one's immorality: that is a step on the staircase at whose end one is also ashamed read more
To be ashamed of one's immorality: that is a step on the staircase at whose end one is also ashamed of one's morality.
An Englishman thinks he is moral when he is only uncomfortable.
An Englishman thinks he is moral when he is only uncomfortable.
A man can do what he ought to do; and when he says he cannot, it is because he will read more
A man can do what he ought to do; and when he says he cannot, it is because he will not.
