“ …if geometry were as much opposed to our passions and present interests as is ethics, we should contest it and violate I but little less, notwithstanding all the demonstrations of Euclid and Archimede… Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
“ Inexperienced in the course of world affairs and incapable of being prepared for all the chances that happen in it, I ask myself only 'Can you also will that your maxim should become a universal law?'… Immanuel Kant
“ What now matters most is how we respond to various risks to the survival of humanity. We are creating some of these risks, and discovering how we could respond to these and other risks. If we reduce t… Derek Parfit
“ Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure. It is for them alone to point out what we ought to do, as well as to determine what we shall do. On the one… Jeremy Bentham
“ The state of a moral man, is one of tranquillity and peace; the state of an immoral man is one of perpetual unrest. Marquis de Sade
“ Hatred is increased by being reciprocated, and can on the other hand be destroyed by love. Baruch Spinoza
“ Morality does not come to this mortal world from some imaginary paradise. It rises from the neurons of mortal humans. Abhijit Naskar
“ Someone once said to me, 'There are so many religions in the world. They can't all be right.' And my reply was, 'Well, they can't all be wrong either.' All religions in the world today share more comm… Suzy Kassem
“ The good which every man, who follows after virtue, desires for himself he will also desire for other men... Baruch Spinoza
“ [A} maxim's legal character must be intrinsic: it must have what I shall call 'lawlike form.' this is why legal character, or universality, must be understood as lawlike form, that is, as a requiremen… Christine M. Korsgaard
“ If you view yourself as having a value-conferring status in virtue of of your power of rational choice, you must view anyone who has the power of rational choice as having...a value conferring status. Christine M. Korsgaard
“ Thus we find that the unconditioned condition of the goodness of anything is rational nature...To play this role, however, rational nature must itself be something of unconditional value--and end in i… Christine M. Korsgaard
“ If indeed good were a feeling....then it would exist in time. But that is why to call it so is to commit the naturalistic fallacy. It will always remain pertinent to ask, whether the feeling itself is… G.E. Moore
“ ...our ultimate moral principles can become so completely accepted by us, that we treat them, not as universal imperatives but as matters of fact; they have the same obstinate indubitability. R.M. Hare
“ The ordinary man so very rarely questions the principles in which he has been brought up, that he is usually willing, whenever he has a feeling that he ought to do 'x', to say on this ground that he o… R.M. Hare
“ ...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 commo… Immanuel Kant
“ [It] is nevertheless better than the theological concept, of deriving morality from a divine, all-perfect will, not merely because we do not intuit this perfection, but can derive it solely from our c… Immanuel Kant
“ What is more, we cannot do morality a worse service than by seeing to derive it from examples. Every example of it presented to me must first itself be judged by moral principles in order to decide if… Immanuel Kant
