Citas de Ethics

“In this theater of man’s life it is reserved for God and the angels to be lookers on.” Man must act; and he must act well or ill, rightly or wrongly.

“The textiles, pottery, and skilfully made tools and weapons; the huts or houses when artistically constructed; the so-called free or fine arts of dance and music, of color and design--all have this common element: they give some visible or audible embodiment for order or form.”

“The moral order and progress of the world might conceivably spare some of the agencies which man has devised; it could not spare this.”

“He cannot begin to be as selfish as a modern individualist; he simply hasn’t the imagery to conceive such an exclusive good, nor the tools with which to carry it out. But he cannot be as broadly social either.”

“And yet the question of the actual existence of a perfect State is not the question of supreme importance. For Plato has grasped the thought that man is controlled not only by what he sees, but by what he images as desirable.”

“Only the beginning, the willing, of an act lies with the man; its conclusion, its outcome in the way of consequences, lies with the gods. Accident, misfortune, unfavorable circumstance, may shut the individual within a life of sickness, misery, and discomfort.”

“This discussion brings out the positive truth for which Bentham and Mill stand: viz., that the moral quality of any impulse or active tendency can be told only by observing the sort of consequences to which it leads in actual practice.”

“The man who takes a high view of the capacities of human nature in itself, who reverences its possibilities and is jealous for their high maintenance in himself, is the one most likely to have keen and sensitive appreciation of the needs of others.”

“It tells us that moral quality resides in the habitual dispositions of an agent; and that it consists of the tendency of these dispositions to secure (or hinder) values which are sociably shared or sharable.”

“Individualism means inequity, harshness, and retrogression to barbarism (no matter under what veneer of display and luxury), unless it is a generalized individualism: an individualism which takes into account the real good and effective--not merely formal--freedom of every social member.”

“Modern law, in its zeal to strengthen the institution of property, releases all the owner’s posterity forever from the necessity of any useful service. The old theology used to carry the conception of inherited or imputed sin and merit to extremes which modern individualism rejects.”

“Men often need most what they want least. Not only the happiness of life but its progress, its unfolding of new capacities and interests, is determined largely by the direction of the consumption.”