Moral Judgment Quotes - Page 2

• A judge found it constitutionally intolerable that Louisiana should interject 'religious beliefs and moral judgments into teaching.'

  William Murchison

  Christian, Religious, Teaching

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• The fundamental question for the United States is how it can cooperate to help meet the basic needs of the people of the hemisphere despite the philosophical disagreements it may have with the nature of particular regimes. It must seek pragmatic ways to help people without necessarily embracing their governments. It should recognize that diplomatic relations are merely practical conveniences and not measures of moral judgment.

  Nelson Rockefeller

  Philosophical, Government, People

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• I like moral judgment to emerge from the reader. We are being sold a very simplistic morality by our leaders at a time when nuance and understanding are at a premium.

  Hari Kunzru

  Leader, Understanding, Nuance

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• One must never fail to pronounce moral judgment.

  Ayn Rand

  Moral, Judgment, Failing

  Ayn Rand (1988). “The Ayn Rand Lexicon: Objectivism from A to Z”, p.318, Penguin

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• I don't believe there is any such definition, there is no such thing as evil, only moral judgments based on what society believes to be wrong behavior.

  Nikolas Schreck

  Believe, Evil, Definitions

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• Let's just call things what they are. When a man's love of finery clouds his moral judgment, that is vanity. When he lets a demanding palate make his moral choices, that is gluttony. When he ascribes the divine will to his own whims, that is pride. And when he gets angry at being reminded of animal suffering that his own daily choices might help avoid, that is moral cowardice.

  Matthew Scully

  Pride, Animal, Men

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• Imagine a person who comes in here tonight and argues 'no air exists' but continues to breathe air while he argues. Now intellectually, atheists continue to breathe - they continue to use reason and draw scientific conclusions [which assumes an orderly universe], to make moral judgments [which assumes absolute values] - but the atheistic view of things would in theory make such 'breathing' impossible. They are breathing God's air all the time they are arguing against him.

  Greg L. Bahnsen

  God, Religious, Atheist

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• I began graduate school in the late 1980s, and my goal was to understand how morality varied across cultures and nations. I did some research comparing moral judgment in India and the U.S.A.

  Jonathan Haidt

  School, Goal, India

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• In all good westerns, the good guy is always a little bit questionable because he kind-of has to make moral judgments.

  Daniel Craig

  Guy, Littles, Moral

  "Capone saddles up with Daniel Craig to talk COWBOYS & ALIENS!!!". Interview with Capone, www.aintitcool.com. July 28, 2011.

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• Indiscriminate tolerance and indiscriminate condemnation are not two opposites: they are two variants of the same evasion. To declare that “everybody is white” or “everybody is black” or “everybody is neither white nor black, but gray,” is not a moral judgment, but an escape from the responsibility of moral judgment.

  Ayn Rand

  Responsibility, Opposites, Two

  Ayn Rand (1988). “The Ayn Rand Lexicon: Objectivism from A to Z”, p.319, Penguin

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• Is cruelty a moral judgment if it is fundamental to forms of life? Who is man to say that the workings of nature, and therefore of the divine plan of which he himself is part, are cruel?

  Charles Lindbergh

  Men, Moral, Divine

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• Character - We describe the character of a person in reference to moral judgments about the worthiness of a person. Thus, to have a strong, great or honorable character is to be a person of merit, worthy of admiration and honor.

  Michael Josephson

  Strong, Character, Honor

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• The Constitution exists precisely so that opinions and judgments, including esthetic and moral judgments about art and literature, can be formed, tested, and expressed. What the Constitution says is that these judgments are for the individual to make, not for the Government to decree, even with the mandate or approval of a majority. Technology expands the capacity to choose; and it denies the potential of this revolution if we assume the Government is best positioned to make these choices for us.

  Anthony Kennedy

  Art, Technology, Government

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• If there is no absolute moral standard, then one cannot say in a final sense that anything is right or wrong. By absolute we mean that which always applies, that which provides a final or ultimate standard. There must be an absolute if there are to be morals, and there must be an absolute if there are to be real values. If there is no absolute beyond man's ideas, then there is no final appeal to judge between individuals and groups whose moral judgments conflict. We are merely left with conflicting opinions.

  Francis Schaeffer

  Real, Mean, Men

  Francis August Schaeffer (1982). “The Complete Works of Francis A. Schaeffer: A Christian view of the west”

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• Real morality is not the product of fearing a spanking. But what does fundamentalist hell-belief encourage? It retards any developing moral judgment by freezing moral maturity right at the most primitive, most childish, stage: the fear of retribution-and fundamentalism threatens one hell of a spanking.

  Robert M. Price

  Real, Maturity, Doe

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• Do we, as humans, having an ability to reason and to communicate abstract ideas verbally and in writing, and to form ethical and moral judgments using the accumulated knowledge of the ages, have the right to take the lives of other sentient organisms, particularly when we are not forced to do so by hunger or dietary need, but rather do so for the somewhat frivolous reason that we like the taste of meat? In essence, should we know better?

  Peter Cheeke

  Writing, Essence, Ideas

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• Somehow it must be made plain that the lawyer's moral judgment is not for hire, that there are occasions when the lawyer . . . is under a duty to act as a person of independent ethical concern with obligations not only to his client's interests but also to fairness and justice in the management of affairs.

  Harry Jones

  Character, Independent, Justice

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• All the particular moral judgments we intuitively make are likely to derive from discarded religious systems, from warped views of sex and bodily functions, or from customs necessary for the survival of the group in social and economic circumstances that now lie in the distant past.

  Peter Singer

  Religious, Sex, Lying

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• Historical explanation is not identical with moral judgment.

  Moses Finley

  Historical, Moral, Judgment

  "Democracy Ancient And Modern". Book by Moses Finley (Second Edition). Chapter 3, Democracy, Consensus and National Interest, p. 96, 1985.

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• For as long as men and women have talked about war, they have talked about it in terms of right and wrong. And for almost as long, some among them have derided such talk, called it a charade, insisted that war lies beyond (or beneath) moral judgment. War is a world apart, where life itself is at stake, where human nature is reduced to its elemental forms, where self-interest and necessity prevail. Here men and women do what they must to save themselves and their communities, and morality and law have no place. Inter arma silent leges: in time of war the law is silent.

  Michael Walzer

  War, Lying, Men

  Michael Walzer (2015). “Just and Unjust Wars: A Moral Argument with Historical Illustrations”, p.26, Basic Books

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• I have confronted theoretical positions whose protagonists claim that what I take to be historically produced characteristics of what is specifically modern are in fact the timelessly necessary characteristics of all and any moral judgment, of all and any selfhood.

  Alasdair MacIntyre

  Facts, Moral, Judgment

  Alasdair MacIntyre (1981). “After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory”, Gerald Duckworth & Co Ltd

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• [W]omen's magazines know that more than two thirds of women pray each day so they tend to promote "spirituality" which is warm, soft, fuzzy, and "me-centered, " rather than religion, which is definitely not. Shot with a soft-focus lens, spirituality in women's media has morphed into another method of stress reduction. Lulling and inoffensive, spirituality is more about taking long walks and buying $65 Jo Malone scented candles than making ethical decisions or moral judgments. It's another way to calm ourselves, refresh ourselves, or applaud ourselves.

  Myrna Blyth

  Stress, Two, Long Walks

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• There is no Christian Gospel if history simply unwinds into a meaningless puddle, if the cosmos simply escapes into a cataclysmic black hole, or if the universe finally dies of exhausted energy. Without belief in a biblical eschatology, there is no Christian hope. Without a sense of perfect moral judgment in the end, the human heart is homeless.

  Albert Mohler

  Christian, Heart, Biblical

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• A perverted moral judgment belongs to the dogmatic system.

  George Eliot

  Atheism, Moral, Judgment

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• Self-righteousness and presumptive moral judgments pose a great danger in the political arena. To become convinced of the divine infallibility of one's personal predilections on a secular political issue is to play God, to assume to oneself the attributes of deity. It cultivates an arrogant intolerance of dissenting viewpoints and relegates one's political adversaries to the category of evil per se.

  Jim Wright

  Self, Play, Issues

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