#ethics

The task of a philosophy of photography is to reflect upon this possibility of freedom - and thus its significance - in a world dominated by apparatuses; to reflect upon the way in which, despite everything, it is possible for human beings to give significance to their lives in the face of the chance necessity of death. Such a philosophy is necessary because it is the only form of revolution left open to us. ↗

— Vilém Flusser

#ethics #photograph #photography #art

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

Were the walls of our meat industry to become transparent, literally or even figuratively, we would not long continue to raise, kill, and eat animals the way we do. ↗

— Michael Pollan

#ethics #industry #meat #nature

Pleasure is Nature's test, her sign of approval. ↗

— Oscar Wilde

#nature

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

Religion and ethics were not always - or even frequently - mutually compatible. The demands of religious absolutism or fundamentalism or rampaging relativism often deflected the worst aspects of contemporary culture or prejudices rather than a system which both man and God could live under with a sense of real justice. ↗

— Dan Simmons

#ethics #religion #religion

You honor yourself by acting with dignity and composure. ↗

— Allan Lokos

#culture #education #ethics #inspiration #meditation

I suppose therefore that all things I see are illusions; I believe that nothing has ever existed of everything my lying memory tells me. I think I have no senses. I believe that body, shape, extension, motion, location are functions. What is there then that can be taken as true? Perhaps only this one thing, that nothing at all is certain. ↗

— René Descartes

#logic #metaphysics #ontology #philosophy #psychology