“I do not believe in the immortality of the individual, and I consider ethics to be an exclusively human concern without any superhuman authority behind it.”
“Despite the fact that an Indonesian island chicken has probably had a much more natural life than one raised on a battery farm in England, people who wouldn t think twice about buying something oven-ready become much more upset about a chicken that they ve been on a boat with, so there is probably buried in the Western psyche a deep taboo about eating anything you ve been introduced to socially.”
“So far as I can tell, most worthwhile pleasures on this earth slip between gratifying another and gratifying oneself. Some would call that an ethics.”
“Ethics change with technology.”
“Our creed [atheism] is indeed a queer creed. You others, Christians (and similar people), consider our ethics much inferior, indeed abominable. There is that little difference. We adhere to ours in practice, you don t.”
“He s bound to have done something,” Nobby repeated. In this he was echoing the Patrician s view of crime and punishment. If there was crime, there should be punishment. If the specific criminal should be involved in the punishment process then this was a happy accident, but if not then any criminal would do, and since everyone was undoubtedly guilty of something, the net result was that, in general terms, justice was done.”
“Ben Franklin said: Early to bed and early to rise Make a man healthy wealthy and wise Lately I have read the advice given to William Randolph Hearst, when a young man, by his father: Go downtown at noon and rob the other fellows of what they have made during the morning.”
“Pleasure is Nature s test, her sign of approval.”
“I predict we will abolish suffering throughout the living world. Our descendants will be animated by gradients of genetically pre-programmed well-being that are orders of magnitude richer than today s peak experiences.”
“To recognize untruth as a condition of life--that certainly means resisting accustomed value feelings in a dangerous way; and a philosophy that risks this would by that token alone place itself beyond good and evil.”
“هل كنت تظن أن الطب يقتصر على فحص المريض ، وكتابة الدواء ، والتباهي بالرداء الأبيض ؟ الطب الحقيقي أعمق من ذلك بكثير ، إنه التعامل مع الإنسان بكل ما في هذه الكلمات من المعاني والظلال”
“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. ”
“Disgust is so reassuring; it feels like a moral proof.”
“It may be considered folly by common opinion but this refusal to destroy life unnecessarily, this reverence for it, must become a deeply implanted part of his ethical standard.”
“Ethics are so annoying. I avoid them on principle.”
“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.”
“The whole interest of my reason, whether speculative or practical, is concentrated in the three following questions: What can I know? What should I do? What may I hope? (Critique of Pure Reason”