Character Quote by Herman Bavinck

“Metaphysics, the belief in the absolute as a holy power, always forms the foundation of ethics.”

— Herman Bavinck

Ethical metaphysics is fundamentally an attempt, however disguised, to give legislative force to our own wishes.

— Bertrand Russell

“If metaphysics enjoys the least freedom from assumed premises, man enjoys the least freedom from metaphysics in that metaphysical beliefs are the most ultimate…

— Fazlur Rahman

“Morals can't function normally because morals have been declared intellectually illegal by the subject object metaphysics that dominates present social thought”

— Robert Pirsig

The laws of conscience, which we pretend to be derived from nature, proceed from Custom.

— Michel de Montaigne

“[There are, in us] possibilities that take our breath away, and show a world wider than either physics or philistine ethics can imagine. Here…

— William James

“Ethics is not a mystic fantasy--nor a social convention--nor a dispensable, subjective luxury...Ethics is an objective necessity of man's survival--not by the grace of…

— Ayn Rand

“There are systems upon systems that are incredible but possessed of a pleasing architecture or a certain agreeable sensationalism. The metaphysicians of Tlön seek…

— Jorge Luis Borges

The principles of ethics come from our own nature as social, reasoning beings.

— Peter Singer

“Metaphysics is… at the root of all other sciences, which indeed presuppose it. It has been abandoned by the modern mind, which seems to…

— Dom Eugene Boylan

“before the advent of any particular cultural, religious, or philosophical ethics, ethics has existed. Not as a unified, normative body of maxims, obligations, duties,…

— Michael D. Jackson

“Let us understand, once for all, that the ethical progress of society depends, not on imitating the cosmic process, still less in running away…

— Thomas Henry Huxley