#ethic

A spirit of license makes a man refuse to commit himself to any standards. The right time is the way he sets his watch. The yardstick has the number of inches that he wills it to have. Liberty becomes license, and unbounded license leads to unbounded tyranny. When society reaches this stage, and there is no standard of right and wrong outside of the individual himself, then the individual is defenseless against the onslaught of cruder and more violent men who proclaim their own subjective sense of values. Once my idea of morality is just as good as your idea of morality, then the morality that is going to prevail is the morality that is stronger. ↗

— Fulton J. Sheen

#morality #objective-truth #standards #men

What if our better nature wasn't better after all? But was instead, well, just nature? ↗

— Kevin Dutton

#nature

Christianity is the most perverted system that ever shone on man. ↗

— Thomas Jefferson

#christianity #ethics #religion #religion

The problem I want to talk to you about tonight is the problem of belief. What does it mean to believe? We use this word all the time, and I think behind it lurk some really extraordinary taboos and confusions. What I want to argue tonight is that how we talk about belief- how we fail to criticize or criticize the beliefs of others, has more importance to us personally, more consequence to us personally and to civilization than perhaps anything else that is in our power to influence. ↗

— Sam Harris

#atheism #belief #ethics #humanism #religion

[On writing:] "There's a great quote by Julius Irving that went, 'Being a professional is doing the things you love to do, on the days you don't feel like doing them.'" (One On 1, interview with Budd Mishkin; NY1, March 25, 2007.) ↗

— David Halberstam

#basketball #david-halberstam #julius-erving #professionalism #sports

People who try hard to do the right thing always seem mad. ↗

— Stephen King

#morality #morals

Am I a good person? Deep down, do I even really want to be a good person, or do I only want to seem like a good person so that people (including myself) will approve of me? Is there a difference? How do I ever actually know whether I'm bullshitting myself, morally speaking? ↗

— David Foster Wallace

#happyness #morality #morals

You get lazy, you get sad. Start givin' up. Plain and simple. ↗

— James Dashner

#ethics

You have just dined, and however scrupulously the slaughterhouse is concealed in the graceful distance of miles, there is complicity. ↗

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

#vegetarianism #ethics

If there were a party of those who aren't sure they're right, I'd belong to it. ~(Camus, as quoted by Tony Judt) ↗

— Albert Camus

#ethics #philosophy #tony-judt #ethics