“There s only one book worth reading: the mind”
“Remember that the food chain is not based on ethics. Nothing in nature is.”
“I have no doubt in my mind whatsoever that our cosmos has no notion of values, ethics, or good deeds.”
“Implicit in this was humanity. With it, the base of survival emerged - A magnificent ethic: The highest command is in terms of the species. The next is survival of group. The lowest of three is survival of self. All good and all evil, all morals, all progress, depend on this order of basic commands. To survive for the self at the price of the group is to jeopardize species. For a group to survive at the price of the specifies is manifest suicide. Here is the essence of good and of greed and a wellspring of justice for all of mankind.”
“Она смеялась, потому что я был мальчик, а она девочка, и между нами появился стыд”
“If it is justifiable to assume that other human beings feel pain as we do, is there any reason why similar inference should be unjustifiable in the case of other animals?”
“The ethical is always more robust than the legal. Over time it is the legal that should converge to the ethical, never the reverse. Hence, laws come and go; ethics stay.”
“The first wave of the digital divide was accessibility. The second wave was how to use it. The next wave is does it shape us? Does it define us? Solving accessibility doesn t help in leveraging the potential, nor does it prevent the risk of tech defining us as a society.”
“Would it have made a difference? This is the question we always ask after we have given up.”
“Just as religion has preempted the field of ethics, turning morality against man, so it has usurped the highest moral concepts of our language, placing them outside this earth and beyond man s reach.”
“..если какой-нибудь свободный человек схватит свободную женщину за кисть руки, он должен будет заплатить 15 солидов; за руку ниже локтя - 30; выше локтя - 35; и, наконец, если он доберётся до груди - 45 солидов”
“White Christian leaders made the double move of enshrining their bigotry in laws while simultaneously labeling the question of slavery as a civil or political issue outside the purview of the church. Not only did the religious, political, and economic establishment create policies to codify slavery and white supremacy, they also pushed these actions outside the realm of Christian ethics. To challenge slavery on moral grounds was to distract from the (selectively) spiritual mission of the church and impinge on the Christian liberty of white slaveholders. White missionaries should not have been surprised, then, that they did not initially have much effectiveness in converting enslaved people to Christianity. Why would the enslaved adopt the religion of slave owners? What good to Black people was a foreign God preaching their perpetual bondage?”
“Treachery, disloyalty, cruelty, tyranny ... are our ordinary vices. - Montaigne, Of Cannibals”
“Skills are important. Ethics are necessary. Competence is desirable. Character is crucial.”
“Education geared to industry demands has also got into the trap of producing commercial technologists for corporations. These corporations are not built for social responsibility in free-market capitalism. Milton Friedman said the biggest and only responsibility of a corporation is to increase shareholders’ wealth. If these corporations do research and find a vaccine eventually that costs $1,000, then those who are not able to afford it would be regarded by mainstream economists as having less willingness to pay. For the poor, it is not a choice, but a helpless situation. But, poor having less budget for essential needs is a problem that we do not start our economics textbooks with.”
“But if life itself is good and pleasant (which it seems to be, from the very fact that all men desire it, and particularly those who are good and supremely happy; for to such men life is most desirable, and their existence is the most supremely happy) and if he who sees perceives that he sees, and he who hears, that he hears, and he who walks, that he walks, and in the case of all other activities similarly there is something which perceives that we are active, so that if we perceive, we perceive that we perceive, and if we think, that we think; and if to perceive that we perceive or think is to perceive that we exist (for existence was defined as perceiving or thinking); and if perceiving that one lives is in itself one of the things that are pleasant (for life is by nature good, and to perceive what is good present in oneself is pleasant); and if life is desirable, and particularly so for good men, because to them existence is good and pleasant for they are pleased at the consciousness of the presence in them of what is in itself good); and if as the virtuous man is to himself, he is to his friend also (for his friend is another self).”
“Rocking the boat is the most un/anti-American trait one could bring to the table! Disturbing or challenging the status quo is disloyal. In this sense, ironically, success in most American workplaces often results in (or is at the expense of) human and intellectual failure.”