When we start deceiving ourselves into thinking not that we want something or need something, not that it is a read more

When we start deceiving ourselves into thinking not that we want something or need something, not that it is a pragmatic necessity for us to have it, but that it is a moral imperative that we have it, then is when we join the fashionable madmen, and then is when the thin whine of hysteria is heard in the land, and then is when we are in bad trouble.

Morality is of the highest importance--but for us, not for God.

Morality is of the highest importance--but for us, not for God.

The disesteem into which moralists have fallen is due at bottom to their failure to see that in an age read more

The disesteem into which moralists have fallen is due at bottom to their failure to see that in an age like this one the function of the moralist is not to exhort men to be good but to elucidate what the good is. The problem of sanctions is secondary.

It is difficult to offend a New Yorker.

It is difficult to offend a New Yorker.

Morality without religion is only a kind of dead reckoning - an endeavor to find our place on a cloudy read more

Morality without religion is only a kind of dead reckoning - an endeavor to find our place on a cloudy sea by measuring the distance we have run, but without any observation of the heavenly bodies.

The end never really justifies the meanness.

The end never really justifies the meanness.

Morality is simply the attitude we adopt towards people whom we personally dislike.

Morality is simply the attitude we adopt towards people whom we personally dislike.

Obscenity is in the crotch of the beholder.

Obscenity is in the crotch of the beholder.

An ethical person ought to do more than he's required to do and less than he's allowed to do

An ethical person ought to do more than he's required to do and less than he's allowed to do