Source: The Importance of Living (1937), Ch. I : The Awakening, p. 13
“The world has far too much morality.”
p 474
The Better Angels of our Nature (2011)
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Steven Pinker 33
psychologist, linguist, author 1954Related quotes
“Dignity is like morality,” Mirabilis barked. “Too much is as bad as too little.”
Source: The Native Star (2010), Chapter 20, “The Otherwhere Marble” (p. 274)
Howard Zinn
(1922–2010) author and historian
Howard Zinn on War (2000), Ch. 14: Vietnam: A Matter of Perspective http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Zinn/Vietnam_Perspective_HZOW.html
Context: Scholars, who pride themselves on speaking their minds, often engage in a form of self-censorship which is called "realism." To be "realistic" in dealing with a problem is to work only among the alternatives which the most powerful in society put forth. It is as if we are all confined to a, b, c, or d in the multiple choice test, when we know there is another possible answer. American society, although it has more freedom of expression than most societies in the world, thus sets limits beyond which respectable people are not supposed to think or speak. So far, too much of the debate on Vietnam has observed these limits.
Jean Piaget
(1896–1980) Swiss psychologist, biologist, logician, philosopher & academic
Source: The Moral Judgment of the Child (1932), Ch. 2 : Adult Constraint and Moral Realism <!-- p. 185 -->
Context: The majority of parents are poor psychologists and give their children the most questionable moral trainings. It is perhaps in this domain that one realized most how keenly how immoral it can be to believe too much in morality, and how much more precious is a little humanity than all the rules in the world. Thus the adult leads the child to the notion of objective responsibility, and consolidates in consequence a tendency that is already natural to the spontaneous mentality of little children.
Bertrand Russell
(1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist
“There was much to hate in this world and too much to love.”
Source: Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West
“One has only as much morality as one has philosophy and poetry.”
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
(1772–1829) German poet, critic and scholar
Man hat nur so viel Moral, als man Philosophie und Poesie hat.
“Selected Ideas (1799-1800)”, Dialogue on Poetry and Literary Aphorisms, Ernst Behler and Roman Struc, trans. (Pennsylvania University Press:1968) #62