“Were we incapable of empathy of putting ourselves in the position of others and seeing that their suffering is like our own then ethical reasoning would lead nowhere. If emotion without reason is...”

“In an earlier stage of our development most human groups held to a tribal ethic. Members of the tribe were protected, but people of other tribes could be robbed or killed as one pleased. Gradually ...”

“What one generation finds ridiculous, the next accepts; and the third shudders when it looks back on what the first did.”

“Philosophy ought to question the basic assumptions of the age. Thinking through, critically and carefully, what most of us take for granted is, I believe, the chief task of philosophy, and the task...”

“If we shrug our shoulders at the avoidable suffering of the weak and the poor, of those who are getting exploited and ripped off, we are not the left.”

“Even in the era of AIDS, sex raises no unique moral issues at all. Decisions about sex may involve considerations about honesty, concern for others, prudence, and so on, but there is nothing specia...”

“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 betw...”

“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 reduc...”

“We have a special name, here, for a certain kind of failure to defer to the greater goodfor putting a personal sense of doing right above any objective measure of the outcome. Its called moral vanity.”

“We stand at a crossroads. Do we choose 'the will to power' or 'the will to humanity,' or perhaps a new configuration of both: the power of humanity?”

“One thing I learned as a journalist is that there is at least one disgruntled person in every workplace in America -- and at least double that number with a conscience. Hard as they try, they simpl...”

“Create all the happiness you are able to create; remove all the misery you are able to remove. Every day will allow you, --will invite you to add something to the pleasure of others, --or to dimini...”

“We being satiate with continual wars, let the desire of peace a little move us.”

“No one won the last war, and no one will win the next war.”

“Unfortunately, that still leaves plenty of Americans who don't read much or think much -- who will still be extremely useful in unjust wars. We are sick about that. We did the best we could. ”