Quotes About Moral Reasoning

#1. The point, of course, is that science increasingly allows us to identify aspects of our minds that cause us to deviate from norms of factual and moral reasoning - norms which, when made explicit, are generally acknowledged to be valid by all parties.

Sam Harris

#2. To be a fully functioning moral agent, one cannot passively accept moral principles handed down by fiat. Moral principles require moral reasoning.

Michael Shermer

#3. If you think that moral reasoning is something we do to figure out the truth, you'll be constantly frustrated by how foolish, biased, and illogical people become when they disagree with you.

Jonathan Haidt

#4. The theater in which God has chosen to meet rational creatures quietly is the inward realm of conscience, moral reasoning, prayer, and study, especially study of the revealed Word.

Thomas C. Oden

#5. Their reliance on biblical quotations does not augur well for their for their openness to moral reasoning ...

Peter Singer

#6. The why of the mind's existence and the how of its profound capacity to reason - especially its penchant for moral reasoning - will by their very nature remain as mysterious as whatever lies outside of time.

Dean Koontz

#7. We do moral reasoning not to reconstruct the actual reasons why we ourselves came to a judgment; we reason to find the best possible reasons why somebody else ought to join us in our judgment.

Jonathan Haidt

#8. When we shrink from the sight of something, when we shroud it in euphemism, that is usually a sign of inner conflict, of unsettled hearts, a sign that something has gone wrong in our moral reasoning.

Matthew Scully

#9. My early research - I'm a social psychologist, and my early research was on how people make moral judgments. When I entered the field in 1987, everybody was looking at moral reasoning - how do kids reason about a moral dilemma? Should a guy steal a drug to save his wife's life?

Jonathan Haidt

#10. That torture is wrong can never be the conclusion to any line of reasoning because it has to be a fundamental premise. Witnessing to the humanity of the other is the place where all moral reasoning must begin.

Giles Fraser

#11. Failure has gone to his head.

Wilson Mizner

#12. In reasoning upon moral subjects, we have great occasion for candor, in order to compare circumstances, and weigh arguments with impartiality.

Nathanael Emmons

#13. Even when we want to be timid and play it safe, we should pause for a moment to imagine what we might be missing.

Paul Arden

#14. Insecurity can be solved the hard way or the easy way - and by giving people the easy option, dogmatic tribes remove the pressure to do the hard work of evolving into a more independent person with a more internally-defined identity.

Tim Urban

#15. There you have it: an expensive higher education based on sloganeering, on pat, trite phrases that substitute moral posturing for political reasoning. It's elitism masquerading as egalitarianism.

Camille Paglia

#16. If you only behave because an invisible man in the sky is watching, then you don't own your own moral structure. Your moral framework is based outside yourself, separate from your reasoning.

Deborah Mitchell

#17. In our reasonings concerning matter of fact, there are all imaginable degrees of assurance, from the highest certainty to the lowest species of moral evidence. A wise man, therefore, proportions his belief to the evidence.

David Hume

#18. I was only ever part of 'Lost' - a very small part of an extremely talented writers' room, where as a writer, it's sort of your job to sublimate your ego and work in the service of the show and the show's voice.

Brian K. Vaughan

#19. Especially when it comes to animals used for food, humanity's reasoning power and concern about fairness plummets.

Karen Davis

#20. I'm not out to change the world. I'm out to change mine.

Rodney White

#21. Government regulators are another name for police.

James Cook

#22. Some people simply use their faith as a lexicon of behavioral reasoning; without that they would be forced to face their own moral and ethical failings honestly according to a secular code of right and wrong.

Deborah Feldman

#23. What a mystery we are to ourselves, even as we go on, learning more, sorting it out a little. The further on we go, the more meaning there is, but the less articulable. You live your life, and the older you get - the more specificity you harvest - the more precious becomes every ounce and spasm.

Gregory Maguire

#24. Live according to your income.

Aulus Persius Flaccus

#25. Opinions upon moral questions are more often the expression of strongly felt expediency than of careful ethical reasoning; and the opinions so formed by one generation become the conscientious convictions or the sacred instincts of the next.

Robert Gascoyne-Cecil

#26. Moral truth, resting entirely upon the ascertained consequences of actions, supposes a process of observation and reasoning.

Frances Wright

#27. ...in its practical purpose the footpath of freedom is the only one on which it is possible to make use of reason in our conduct. Hence it is as impossible for the subtlest philosophy as for the commonest reasoning to argue freedom away.

Immanuel Kant

#28. All men can see the tactics whereby I conquer, but what none can see is the strategy out of which victory is evolved.

Sun Tzu

#29. If you try to make the Democrats be what they are not, and never will be, you will end up being more like what the Democrats actually are.

Bob Avakian

#30. Besides reasoning about matters of fact, men also make moral judgements.

C.S. Lewis

#31. When you're down, remember your triumphs. [ ... ] Sometimes you get in trouble and crash. Other times: just a bumpy landing.

Ellyn Bache