Get QuoteDark Inspirational Quotes App

" Society needs both justice and compassion, a head and a heart, if it is to be civilised. "

Related Quotes:

" I don't believe in God because certain reasons and arguments weigh more heavily in my mind than others, not because I have willfully decided to reject my creator, as many religious people seem to think. I could no more simply decide to believe in God than I could decide to like beetroot, just like that. "

" Trying to keep up with health advice can feel like surfing the Net for weather forecasts: what you find is always changing, often contradictory and rarely encouraging. "

" Right and wrong are not simply matters of evolutionary impacts and what is natural. "

" If there's one thing that makes me cynical, it's optimists. They are just far too cynical about cynicism. If only they could see that cynics can be happy, constructive, even fun to hang out with, they might learn a thing or two. "

" Economics is uncertain because its fundamental subject matter is not money but human action. That's why economics is not the dismal science, it's no science at all. "

" The greatest moral failing is to condemn something as a moral failing: no vice is worse than being judgmental. "

" The mark of a mature, psychologically healthy mind is indeed the ability to live with uncertainty and ambiguity, but only as much as there really is. Uncertainty is no virtue when the facts are clear, and ambiguity is mere obfuscation when more precise terms are applicable. "

" Cooking can be rewarding when it is a choice and no longer the onerous duty of the housewife, and when a dishwasher can lighten the load at the other end of the process. "

" Believers are right when they say that to understand a religion properly you need to get under its skin. But to understand it fully, you cannot stay there: you have to take a more objective view, too. "

" Wellbeing is a notion that entails our values about the good life, and questions of values are not ultimately scientific questions. "

" The simplest and clearest motivation for taking animal welfare seriously is the recognition that pain is in and of itself a bad thing, and that to inflict significant amounts of it unnecessarily is wrong. "

" It may not have the virtuous ring of the golden rule, but the maxim 'never say never' is one of the most important in ethics. "

" You should protest about the views of people you disagree with over major moral issues, and argue them down, but you should not try to silence them, however repugnant you find them. That is the bitter pill free speech requires us to swallow. "

" Being a good neighbour is about compassion, which is as warm-blooded as justice is cool-headed. "

" Any celebration meal to which guests are invited, be they family or friends, should be an occasion for generous hospitality. "

" Progress is more of a challenge for the cynic but also more important and urgent, since for the optimist things aren't that bad and are bound to get better anyway. "

" There is such a thing as fanaticism, it is always wrong, and if you disagree, you're wrong too. "

" Justice can only be dispensed when you have all the facts in front of you. "

" Christmas is a rare occasion when we are reminded that we have obligations to people we did not choose to be related to, and that love is not just a spontaneous feeling but something we sometimes really have to work at, with people we may not even much like. "

" I maintain the importance of an absolute prohibition against torture, while acknowledging that even absolute prohibitions can sometimes be broken. If that is a contradiction, it is a contradiction that ethics has to embrace, or else it becomes like glass: hard, clear, but fatally inflexible. "

" If you believe you are right, then you should believe that you can make the case that you're right. This requires you to deal with serious objections properly. "

" In my experience, those who make the biggest fuss about not spending much at Christmas are generally the ones who buy what they want and eat where they want 12 months a year. "

" From time to time, it is worth wandering around the fuzzy border regions of what you do, if only to remind yourself that no human activity is an island. "

" Atheists should point out that life without God can be meaningful, moral and happy. "

" If we find it hard to believe that winning millions might not be so lucky after all, we just don't have a good enough imagination. If I fantasise about winning the lottery, it doesn't take long before all sorts of worrisome potential consequences occur to me. "

" Whatever your religious persuasion, if you believe that that the universe is governed by benign forces, at some point you have to explain why there is so much suffering, misfortune and misery in the world. "

" The only good reason to embrace a philosophical position is that you are convinced it is true or at least makes sense of the world better than the alternatives. "

" It's not leftovers that are wasteful, but those who either don't know what to do with them or can't be bothered. "

" Instead of showing strangers kindness and giving them the benefit of the doubt, we increasingly show them only fear, and that is bad for us and them. "

" The idea that the mind can extend even beyond the body is an intriguing one, and is bound to become more pressing as we increasingly develop technologies that augment our natural abilities. "