Consequentialism Ethics Quotes & Sayings

Leisure is the handmaiden of the devil. — Branch Rickey

You can't please everyone, nor should you seek to, because then you won't please anyone, least of all yourself. — Dylan Moran

Our refusal to fear reminds the devil that he is finished! — Bill Johnson

We have a special name, here, for a certain kind of failure to defer to the greater good - for putting a personal sense of doing right above any objective measure of the outcome. It's called 'moral vanity'. — Greg Egan

A recent canvass of professional philosophers found the percentage of respondents who "accept or leans toward" various positions. On normative ethics, the results were deontology 25.9%; consequentialism 23.6%; virtue ethics 18.2%. On metaethics, results were moral realism 56.4%; moral anti-realism 27.7%. On moral judgment: cognitivism 65.7%; non-cognitivism 17.0% (Bourget and Chalmers 2009). — Nick Bostrom

I won the parental lottery. Most of the kids I grew up with either came from really fractured homes, or really violent ones. I went home to a very traditional, good Irish Catholic family. — Dennis Lehane

Thou madest him, but sin in him Thou madest not. — Augustine Of Hippo

The denial of any distinction between foreseen and intended consequences, as far as responsibility is concerned, was not made by Sidgwick in developing any one 'method of ethics'; he made this important move on behalf of everybody and just on its own account; and I think it plausible to suggest that this move on the part of Sidgwick explains the difference between old-fashioned Utilitarianism and the consequentialism, as I name it, which marks him and every English academic moral philosopher since him. — G. E. M. Anscombe

If you believe that the world is going to come to an end - and perhaps any day now - does it not drain one's motivation to improve life on earth while we're here? — Bill Maher

Pacifists have usually regarded the use of violence as absolutely wrong, irrespective of its consequences. This, like other 'no matter what' prohibitions, assumes the validity of the distinction between acts and omissions. Without this distinction, pacifists who refuse to use violence when it is the only means of preventing greater violence would be responsible for the greater violence they fail to prevent. — Peter Singer

If you want a baby, have a new one. Don't baby the old one. — Jessamyn West

Some Native people suggest that one should test how cold the hands are by touching the thumb to the little finger of the same hand. As soon as you cannot carry out this exercise you are reaching a dangerous state of incapacity and you should immediately take steps to warm up. — Mors Kochanski

He [Abram] believes that the PRESENT is the only real thing and everything else is an illusion
a distraction — Jennifer DeLucy

Listen to what your heart pumps for. It beats for what it loves. — N.R. Hart

I really don't use that much make up - I'm pretty natural. I wear even less of it in the summer. — Kristin Kreuk

God, the devil, good, evil, it's all in our heads, not in Heaven or Hell, which we also invented. We do not realize that, having invented God, we immediately became His slaves. — Jose Saramago

The imperialists and domestic reactionaries will certainly not take their defeat Lying down and they will struggle to the last ditch. After there is peace and order throughout the country, they will still engage in sabotage and create disturbances in various ways and will try every day and every minute to stage a comeback. This is inevitable, beyond all doubt, and under no circumstances must we relax our vigilance. — Mao Zedong