To act morally is not to act out of fear of punishment; it is not to act as one is commanded to act. Rather, it is to act as one ought to act. And how one ought to act is not dependent upon anyone's power, even if the power be Divine.
Factory farming came about from a moral race to the bottom, with corporations vying against each other to produce more and bigger animals with less care at lower cost.
Ought we not to ask the media to agree among themselves a voluntary code of conduct, under which they would not say or show anything which could assist the terrorists' morale or their cause while the hijack lasted.
I tell my students, if you ever become comfortable with your role as criminal defense lawyer, it's time to quit. It should be a constant source of discomfort, because you're dealing with incredible moral ambiguity, and you've been cast into a role wh...
We wanted to see this country win the war just as much as those advisors did. We felt we would help to do that by reporting the truth. And so there was the moral outrage over this general and the ambassador in Saigon who kept denying the truth we wou...
My mom broke the mold. She put my brother and I first, always, and worked her fingers to the bone trying to provide for us. She taught us right from wrong and gave us very strong morals and values and belief in family, things that have stayed with me...
Perhaps looking out through big baby eyes - if we could - would not be as revelatory experience as many imagine. We might see a world inhabited by objects and people, a world infused with causation, agency, and morality - a world that would surprise ...
There is increasing social concern about our use of nonhumans for experiments, food, clothing and entertainment. This concern about animals reflects both our own moral development as a civilization and our recognition that the differences between hum...
The struggle of democratic secularism, religious tolerance, individual freedom and feminism against authoritarian patriarchal religion, culture and morality is going on all over the world - including the Islamic world, where dissidents are regularly ...
History is full of examples of people who clamp down after they began to enjoy too much freedom. Freedom can lead to instability, anarchy, and confusion. So there can be a moral counter-revolution.
How often I have found that we grow to maturity not by doing what we like, but by doing what we should. How true it is that not every 'should' is a compulsion, and not every 'like' is a high morality and true freedom.
The American people need to know that there are folks here fighting as hard as they can for individual liberty, economic freedom, appropriate national security and the fundamental moral values that have made our nation the greatest nation in the hist...
I come from a highly moral family. I was very much taught what was right and wrong, and in my perception of things, I did something that was very wrong. To know that, and to then be so publicly exposed, was very hard.
As a social primate species, we modulate our morals with signals from family, friends and social groups with whom we identify because in our evolutionary past, those attributes helped individuals to survive and reproduce.
A hostility to modernity is shared by ideologies that have nothing else in common - a nostalgia for moral clarity, small-town intimacy, family values, primitive communism, ecological sustainability, communitarian solidarity, or harmonies with the rhy...
The purpose of a moral philosophy is not to look delightfully strange and counterintuitive or to provide employment to bioethicists. The purpose is to guide our choices toward life, health, beauty, happiness, fun, laughter, challenge, and learning.
If we are to survive, we must have ideas, vision, and courage. These things are rarely produced by committees. Everything that matters in our intellectual and moral life begins with an individual confronting his own mind and conscience in a room by h...
The preservation of peace and the guaranteeing of man's basic freedoms and rights require courage and eternal vigilance: courage to speak and act - and if necessary, to suffer and die - for truth and justice; eternal vigilance, that the least transgr...
Above all, we must realize that no arsenal, or no weapon in the arsenals of the world, is so formidable as the will and moral courage of free men and women. It is a weapon our adversaries in today's world do not have.
We don't do drugs, drink or use profanity. Instead we instill morals and values in my boys by raising them with a love of God and a love and respect for themselves and all people. I believe they will have a chance.
Take, therefore, what modern technology is capable of: the power of our moral sense allied to the power of communications and our ability to organize internationally. That, in my view, gives us the first opportunity as a community to fundamentally ch...
