Word
Gems
What is a
man but the sum of his thoughts?
Morality
& Goodness
- "Social values in general are incrementally variable:
neither safety, diversity, rational articulation, nor morality is categorically a 'good
thing' to have more of, without limits. All are subject to diminishing returns, and
ultimately negative returns... Unbounded morality ultimately becomes
counterproductive even in terms of the same moral principles being sought... Morality,
like other inputs into the social process, follows the law of diminishing returns --
meaning ultimately, negative returns. People can be too moral."
Thomas Sowell
- Immanuel Kant (1724-1804): "Act so that your principles of action
might safely be made a law for the whole world."
- Liz Taylor: "The problem with people who have no vices is
that generally you can be pretty sure they're going to have some pretty annoying
virtues."
- Bob MacFarland: "Moral relativism is a term (like
secular humanism) often bandied about by right-wing religious zealots whose appeal lies in
their ability to take all of the complex and dynamic issues we face as humans and paint
them as either black or white, thus satisfying the basic human desire to bring order to
chaos, and allowing their simple-minded followers to not have to decide anything for
themselves and remain in a state of blissful ignorance."
- Walter Lippmann: "At the core of every moral code there is
a picture of human nature, a map of the universe, and a version of history. To human
nature (of the sort conceived), in a universe (of the kind imagined), after a history (so
understood), the rules of the code apply."
- John Locke: "To love truth for truth's sake is the
principal part of human perfection in this world, and the seed-plot of all other
virtues."
- Thomas Henry Huxley: "The foundation of all morality is to
have done, once and for all, with lying; to give up pretending to believe that for which
there is no evidence, and repeating unintelligible propositions about things beyond the
possibilities of knowledge."
- Friedrich Nietzsche: "The struggle against a purpose in art is
always a struggle against the moral tendency in art -- against its subordination to
morality. Art for art's sake means, Let morality go to the Devil."
- Ayn Rand: "Individual rights are the means of subordinating
society to moral law."
- Mark Twain: "Each of you, for himself, by himself and on his
own responsibility, must speak. And it is a solemn and weighty responsibility, and not
lightly to be flung aside at the bullying of pulpit, press, government, or the empty
catchphrases of politicians. Each must for himself alone decide what is right and what is
wrong, and which course is patriotic and which isn't. You cannot shirk this and be a man.
To decide against your convictions is to be an unqualified and inexcusable traitor, both
to yourself and to your country, let man label you as they may. If you alone of all the
nation shall decide one way, and that way be the right way according to your convictions
of the right, you have done your duty by yourself and by your country- hold up your head!
You have nothing to be ashamed of."
- Ayn Rand: "Men have been taught that it is a virtue to agree
with others. But the creator is the man who disagrees. Men have been taught that it is a
virtue to swim with the current. But the creator is the man who goes against the current.
Men have been taught that it is a virtue to stand together. But the creator is the man who
stands alone."
- William Blake: "He who would do good to another must do it in
Minute Particulars. General Good is the plea of the scoundrel, hypocrite, and
flatterer."
- Dr. Gerald Schroeder, Genesis and the Big Bang: "You
shall love your neighbor as yourself (Lev.19:18) is the great principle of the
Torah... In the Talmud we are ... told that Hillel the Elder, in the first century BCE,
was asked by a skeptic to teach the entire Torah, the guide that had directed Hillel in
his life's journey, and to do this while he stood on one foot. Hillel fulfilled the
request. What is hateful to you, he said, do not to your friend. This is the
entire Torah. The rest is commentary. Go forth and learn."
- Don Feder, Feb. 5, 2001: "West of Austin, Texas,
investigators have found what they believe to be the remains of the archbishop of atheism,
Madalyn Murray O'Hair. God rest her soul. O'Hair and two family members were abducted and
murdered in 1995 in the course of a robbery, apparently by an ex-employee of her American
Atheists Inc... O'Hair died horribly, a victim of the world she helped to
shape. Without the Deity she fought so hard against, there is no right and wrong,
increasingly people are ruled by their passions and humanity is a tragedy waiting to
happen."
- Dr. Mortimer Adler, Syntopicon essay,
"Truth": "But the ancient controversy in which Socrates
engages with the sophists of his day, who were willing to regard as true whatever anyone
wished to think, seems to differ not at all from Freud's quarrel with those whom he calls intellectual
nihilists. They are the persons who say there is no such thing as truth or that it is
only the product of our own needs and desires. They make it 'absolutely immaterial,' Freud
writes, 'what views we accept. All of them are equally true and false. And no one has a
right to accuse anyone else of error.' ... If all opinions are equally true or false, then
why, Aristotle asks, does not the denier of truth walk 'into a well or over a precipice'
instead of avoiding such things. 'If it were really a matter of indifference what we
believed,' Freud similarly argues, 'then we might just as well build our bridges of
cardboard as of stone, or inject a tenth of a gramme of morphia into a patient instead of
a hundredth, or take tear-gas as a narcotic instead of ether. But,' he adds, 'the
intellectual anarchists themselves would strongly repudiate such practical applications of
their theory.'"
- Albert Einstein: "The ideals which have lighted my way, and
time after time have given me new courage to face life cheerfully, have been Kindness,
Beauty, and Truth."
- Betty J. Eadie, The Ripple Effect: "Everything we
do ripples out; we affect others, and they in turn affect us. Sometimes the ripples create
huge waves that wash over humanity, changing it forever, as Christ's life did. Sometimes
they are so small that they remain relatively unknown in this lifetime."
- M. Scott Peck: "The whole course of human history may
depend on a change of heart in one solitary and even humble individual -- for it is in the
solitary mind and soul of the individual that the battle between good and evil is waged
and ultimately won or lost."
- Will & Ariel Durant: "Does history warrant the
conclusion that religion is necessary to morality -- that a natural ethic is too
weak to withstand the savagery that lurks under civilization and emerges in our dreams,
crimes and wars? ... There is no significant example in history, before our time, of a
society successfully maintaining moral life without the aid of religion."
- C.S. Lewis: "The rescue of drowning men is ... a duty worth
dying for, but not worth living for. It seems to me that all political duties (among which
I include military duties) are of this kind. A man may have to die for our
country: but no man must, in any exclusive sense, live for his country. He who
surrenders himself without reservation to the temporal claims of a nation, or a party, or
a class is rendering to Caesar that which, of all things, most emphatically belongs to
God: himself."
- St. Paul, Romans 14, The Message
translation: "Cultivate your own relationship with God,
but don't impose it on others. You're fortunate if your behavior and your belief
are coherent. But if you're not sure, if you notice that you are acting in ways
inconsistent with what you believe--some days trying to impose your opinions on others,
other days just trying to please them--then you know that you're out of line. If the way you live isn't consistent with what you believe, then
it's wrong."
- Will Durant, The Story of Civilization: "Part of
the function of parentage is the transmission of a moral code. For the child is more
animal than human; it has humanity thrust upon it day by day as it receives the moral and
mental heritage of the race. Biologically it is badly equipped for civilization, since its
instincts provide only for traditional and basic situations, and include impulses more
adapted to the jungle than to the town. Every vice was once a virtue, necessary in
the struggle for existence; it became a vice only when it survived the conditions that
made it indispensable; a vice, therefore, is not an advanced form of behavior, but usually
an atavistic throwback to ancient and superseded ways. It is one purpose of a
moral code to adjust the unchanged - or slowly changing - impulses of human nature to the
changing needs and circumstances of social life. Greed, acquisitiveness, dishonesty,
cruelty and violence were for so many generations useful to animals and men... [E]very
society inculcates a moral code, and builds up in the heart of the individual ... social
dispositions that mitigate the natural war of life; it encourages - by calling them
virtues - those qualities or habits in the individual which redound to the advantage of
the group, and discourages contrary qualities by calling them vices."
- Will Durant, The Story of Civilization: "Modesty
... enabled the girl, where she had any choice, to select her mate more deliberately, or compel
him to show finer qualities before winning her; and the very obstructions it
raised against desire generated those sentiments of romantic love which heightened her
value in his eyes."
- Michael S. Russo, Molloy College, Department
of Philosophy: "Virtue as Knowledge: The ultimate aim of Socrates' philosophical
method is always ethical. Socrates believed that if one knows what the good is, one
will always do what is good. Thus if one truly understands the meaning of
courage, self-control, or justice, one will act in a courageous, self-controlled and just
manner. The corollary to this view is that all vice, then, must be due to
ignorance. Nobody, he believes, knowingly does what is wrong: they always think
that what they are doing is right. Can you imagine someone saying, for example, 'I
know that this act is completely wrong and totally wicked, but I am going to do it
anyway.' In fact, even the person who performs the most heinous acts
imaginable always thinks that he is doing them for some good reason. It
follows that Socrates could never accept the possibility of what Aristotle would call
'moral weakness' (acrasia) -- that is 'knowing the good and yet doing the
evil.' In his view, we deceive ourselves into thinking that the evil we do is
actually good, so that we can justify our wicked actions. In this sense, the
evil-doer neither really knows what the good is nor does he intentionally choose
evil."
- Professor Daniel N. Robinson, Georgetown University: Socrates
says we are inclined by pleasure and pain -- people tend to do things that please them and
avoid things that cause them suffering. "Sometimes we are so driven by these
sensual desires that our rational powers are trumped" ... how do we discover
the right cause of action [in light of this internal struggle]? ... harmony and balance
are the goals and guides of life. We are to avoid excesses. Socrates is persuaded that the
spiritual dimension of life can be corrupted ... by our experiences. To be
exposed, early in life, to discord and disharmony, is to condition the soul to be at home
with these imbalances; it is to make one comfortable with that which is false and
untrue. The souls of children must be so conditioned as to find pleasure in the
proportional, the balanced, the beautiful and the good; and to eschew the monstrous and
the discordant... Can virtue be taught? Socrates
says that it can, but not to everyone, and not at all times. [The moral-learner
must be ready and able to receive such instruction; the good and the excellent must find
resonance deep within the learner, must be voluntarily accepted. The rational powers of
reason must be aided, ideally, by early education, in order to help the moral-learner
overcome the sometimes short-term benefits and allurements of ill-gotten pleasures].
- Thomas Jefferson: "Do not bite at the bait of pleasure till
you know there is no hook."
- Will & Ariel Durant, The Lessons of History:
"Moral codes differ because they adjust themselves to historical and environmental
conditions. If we divide economic history into three stages -- hunting, agriculture,
industry -- we may expect that the moral code of one stage will be changed in the next...
[Regarding agriculture,] children were economic assets; birth control was made immoral. On
the farm the family was the unit of production under the discipline of the father ... and paternal
authority had a firm economic base... [Males] married early ... all he needed was
land, a plow and a willing arm... As for young women, chastity was indispensable, for its
loss might bring unprotected motherhood... For fifteen hundred years this agricultural
moral code of continence, early marriage, divorceless monogamy, and multiple maternity
maintained itself... the Industrial Revolution changed the economic form and moral
superstructure... Men, women and children left home to work as individuals, individually
paid, in factories... children no longer we economic assets; marriage was delayed;
premarital continence was more difficult to maintain. The city offered every
discouragement to marriage, but provided every stimulus and facility for sex... The
authority of father and mother lost its economic base through the growing individualism
of industry... education spread religious doubts; morality lost more and
more of its supernatural supports. the old agricultural moral code began to die... So we cannot be sure that the moral laxity of our times is a
herald of decay rather than a painful ... transition between a moral code that has lost
its agricultural basis and another that our industrial civilization has yet to forge into
social order and normality."
- Henry David Thoreau, On the Duty of Civil Disobedience, 1849: "I
think we should be men first, and subjects afterwards. It is not desirable to cultivate a
respect for the law, so much as for the right. The only obligation which I have a right to
assume is to do at any time what I think right."
- Aristotle: "All virtue is summed up in dealing justly."
- Leon Trotsky, Diary
in Exile: diary
entry for April 5, 1935: "The depth and strength of a human character are defined by its moral reserves. People reveal themselves completely only
when they are thrown out of the customary conditions of their life, for only then do they
have to fall back on their reserves."
- C.S. Lewis, God in the Dock: "Of all tyrannies, a
tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better
to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's
cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for
they do so with the approval of their consciences."
- Meister Eckhart (1260-1328): "People
should think less about what they ought to do and more about what
they ought to be. If only their being were good, their works would shine
forth brightly."
- Joseph Goldstein: "The commitment to morality, or non-harming, is a source of tremendous strength,
because it helps free the mind from the remorse of having
done unwholesome actions."
-
Joseph R. Fornieri, The
Lincoln Forum, Lincoln Revisited (2007):
Fornieri, in this collection of Lincoln essays, helps us
to understand Judge Douglas’ central undergirding platform, the
doctrine of “popular sovereignty,” which would allow new
territories to extend or deny the institution of slavery. This
precept of self-determinism is “perfectly logical,” responded
Lincoln, “if there is no
difference between hogs and negroes… [but the question is]
whether a negro is not or is a
man. If he is not a man … he who is a
man may, as a matter of self-government, do just as he pleases
with him. But if the
negro is a man [shall he not] also govern
himself? When the white man governs himself that is
self-government; but when he governs himself, and also governs
another man [without that other man’s consent], that is more than
self-government – that is despotism.” Lincoln went on to
explain how the European “Divine Right of Kings,” something from
which we had recently extricated ourselves, employed, in
principle, this same notion of privileged and superior certain
ones ruling over a lesser class of beings. All of this violated
the “ancient faith,” a term by which Lincoln referred to the
precepts of the Declaration of Independence, the moral foundation
of the nation, in its statements that “all men are created equal.”
“No man,” Lincoln
asserted, “is good enough to govern another man, without that
other’s consent. I say this is the leading principle -- the sheet
anchor of American republicanism.” Douglas weakly responded
with a claim that God had placed Adam and Eve in the garden and
had told them to make their choice – exalting “choice” as a
universal trump card. Lincoln bashed this sophistry with “God
did not place good and evil before man, telling him to make his
choice. On the contrary, he did tell him there was one tree, of
the fruit of which, he should not eat, upon the pain of certain
death.” Fornieri, speaking even more plainly: “If taken to its logical conclusion, Douglas’
reading of the Bible would obliterate any firm basis for moral
judgments by making them entirely relative to personal choice.”
Lincoln then goes further and eviscerates notions of choice and
prattle of self-government as nothing more than an undisguised
policy of “self-interest” masquerading as morality. Lincoln
began speaking of these issues with earnest in 1854, after
the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act. His continued insightful
commentary culminated in the famous Lincoln-Douglas debates of
1858. Judge Douglas won the Illinois senate seat in ’58 – but Mr.
Lincoln, his punch-and-jab speeches gaining the respect of some
and the attention of all, found himself catapulted to the
Presidency only two years later.
|