Right and wrong

“ If the qualities of right and wrong be not in very truth real, if they be not verities of conduct in the constituted relations of human life, if the ideas answer not to a true distinction set before us for our recognition and conformity, then virtue is a dream, obligation an illusion, and conscience a fraud. ”

“ That element is the eternal distinction, speaking broadly, between good and evil—between right and wrong—between the secret consciousness of having done right, and the consciousness of mere strength and force in certain other ways. ”

“ You see there’s always the awful question of right and wrong mixed up with everything; all sorts of rights and wrongs, in the simplest things. I can’t think how people can go on so calmly. It sometimes seems to me as if everyone ought to stop and do quite other things. ”

“ The writer found that long familiarity with such scenes resulted in a demoralization of noble sentiment and refined feelings; so that at last one came to regard human life not much above the level of brutes, and to feel that there is no virtue except in name, and that the distinction of right and wrong is only relative and conventional, having no absolute and universal foundation in truth and equity. ”

“ Leaving the difference between the good and the evil, between light and darkness, and between right and wrong, truth and error, as marked out by the dividing line, let us glance at the effects of the two principles. ”

“ Somehow, too, that old simple question of right and wrong is apt to assume new aspects when looked upon from the bank of a certain dark river, into which one may have immediately to plunge. Right is unequivocal right, and wrong is unequivocal wrong, seen thus. ”

“ But most of those who hold that an action can be both right and wrong are, I think, in fact influenced by certain considerations, which do admit of argument. They hold certain views, from which this conclusion follows; and it is only because they hold these views, that they adopt the conclusion. ”

“ One might suppose, from the tone of opinion among us, not only that the difference between right and wrong marks the most important aspect of conduct, which would be true; but that it marks the only aspect of it that exists, or that is worth considering, which is most profoundly false. ”

“ There is no other distinction between right and wrong save what the dogmatic systems on the one hand give as their capricious determinations, and what the moral insight on the other hand shows as the expression of what it involves. ”

“ Moreover, there is much on which men can be agreed, broken arcs visible to all, though the perfect round is seen by none. There are right and wrong, truth and falsehood, honesty and dishonesty, love and hate, purity and vice, honour and dishonour, and the difference between them is as apparent and real as the difference 'twixt day and night, albeit, now and again, a twilight of uncertainty may render doubtful the confines of separation. ”

“ Right means any whim that they happen to take into their heads, and wrong means our notion. Overwhelm them with something that cuts their arguments to pieces—they hold their tongues and look at you as if you were a dead dog. ”

“ But in matters of right and wrong, whatever be the lures, the taunts, or the usages of the world, or whatever the supposed inconveniences of singularity, let judgment and conscience always rule with absolute sway. ”

“ They bring before us thousands of men, often the most conspicuous in the ever-changing drama of public life, from whose thinking the notions of right and wrong seem to have been wanting or obliterated, acting only from selfishness, avarice, or ambition, monsters of injustice, heartlessness, cruelty and blood. ”

“ Man perceived right everywhere and in all things just as he had done at first—then in the simple concrete form of the right to his own existence, now in the highly-abstract form of everything having its own right and wrong. ”

“ Right and wrong, good and bad, he regarded as qualities solely of conduct—of acts and omissions; there being no feeling which may not lead, and does not frequently lead, either to good or to bad actions: conscience itself, the very desire to act right, often leading people to act wrong. ”

“ Hence, human Reason must always receive its particular Cast and Colour from the pre-established Passions, Habits, and Principles; will ever form its ruling Ideas of Good and Evil, Right and Wrong, Just and Unjust, from these great Fountains of human Action. ”

“ Nothing can permanently secure our moral being in the absence of a restraining will basing itself upon a strong sense of the difference between right and wrong, upon the firm groundwork of principle and honour. ”

“ But those who hold the view we are considering will be liable to reply that this is by no means sufficient: that to say that it is sufficient, is entirely to misconceive the nature of right and wrong. ”

“ But by far the most serious consideration yet remains. If, according to Monistic teaching men are but bubbles on the surface of reality, and are inevitably carried as it wills,—there is an end of all distinction between good and evil, right and wrong, merit and guilt. ”

“ "I have got so far as to lose the distinction between right and wrong. Isn't that the first step in politics?" ”

“ For, ultimately, how do we know that right is right, and wrong is wrong? People in general accept it on authority; but authority itself must repose on some ulterior basis; and what is that? Are we to say that in morals there is a system of primary axioms, out of which we develope our conclusions, and apply them, as they are needed, to life? ”

“ Or, further, should a bolder and more radical view allege that these notions of right and wrong are mere matters of taste and prejudice, a fictitious product of adventitious circumstances and education,36 without verity or validity at bottom, the offered explanation would be simply a denial, but no disproof of the fact concerned. For it would amount to a claim that in the absolute sense one thing is essentially as good as another, and would thus disregard the real affirmation as it stands in the moral judgment of mankind. ”

“ And we learn nothing from being told that our conscience or sense of duty, our sentiments in regard to right and wrong, our obligation to pursue one course of conduct and to avoid another course, are ultimate principles which admit of no further analysis or explanation. ”

“ We shall all agree, all of us at least who have thought at all about right and wrong, and tried to do right and avoid wrong—that there goes on in us, at times, a strange struggle. We wish to do a right thing, and at the very same time long to do a wrong one. ”

“ Let us reinforce, by word, deed, and example, the values that make law and order possible: personal responsibility, respect for others, and the fundamental sense of decency that comes from knowing the difference between right and wrong. ”

“ People differ widely as to absolute standards of right and wrong, and as to the foundation or source of such standards, but all concede by daily acts, as well as by avowed opinions, the necessity of some kind of moral training. ”

“ There are certain fundamental notions as to what is just and what is unjust, what is virtuous and what is vicious, that find universal or all but universal acceptance. This power of distinguishing between right and wrong constitutes man a moral being, and separates him by infinite distance from the lower animals. ”

“ That our moral notions of right and wrong, with reference to each particular of conduct, are distinct and complete in exact proportion to the clearness and fullness of our perception of the relations which that particular of conduct appertains to; that their influence in the guiding of our conduct depends upon the distinctness with which they have thus been formed ”

“ These theoretical discords are accompanied by varying standards of right and wrong in different states and periods of society, while everywhere are seen the most glaring discrepancies between professed moral precepts and actual moral practice. ”

“ But this I do know: that our sense of right and wrong is derived from such order as we can observe, and not from such caprice of disorder as we may fancifully conjecture; and that to whatever extent a divergence from exactness became sensible, to that extent it would destroy the most widespread and worthy of the acquisitions of mankind. ”

“ For when you once have done a Wrong, The Right receives a blow,-- And Wrong will triumph easier now, So haste and answer, No. There's many a little boy and girl, And man and woman too, Have gone to ruin and to death For want of saying, No! ”

“ I know and feel that I am a responsible being, but somehow my notions of right and wrong are so confused, I have learned to look on so many things differently from what I used, that I 'd cut a sorry figure under cross-examination on any matter of morality. ”

“ if it warn’t so, I wouldn’t approve of it, nor I wouldn’t stand by and see the rules broke—because right is right, and wrong is wrong, and a body ain’t got no business doing wrong when he ain’t ignorant and knows better. ”

“ There was once a moralist who spoke of the narrow path which lay between right and wrong, and similarly there used to be a Debatable Land which lay between the good and evil districts of society. It was inhabited by the people who, having no ethical convictions of their own, go very much as they are led. ”

“ Our judgment must be right—because it is our judgment. Therefore, unconsciously or consciously, every subsequent impression is bent to bolster up and sustain that judgment. We hate to be wrong. We hate to admit, even to ourselves, that we are wrong. ”

“ But the moral sense, the sense of right and wrong, of good and evil, which shows law in its true guise as the benignant representative of order rather than the terror of disorder, is a higher guide, a truer teacher, and a more humane and lasting power. ”

“ In youth, it is common to measure right and wrong by the opinion of the world, and, in age, to act without any measure but interest, and to lose shame without substituting virtue. ”

“ "The real issue in this country is the eternal struggle between these two principles—right and wrong—throughout the world. They are the two principles that have stood face to face from the beginning of time, and will ever continue to struggle. ”

“ And it occurs to no one that to admit a greatness not commensurable with the standard of right and wrong is merely to admit one’s own nothingness and immeasurable meanness.
For us with the standard of good and evil given us by Christ, no human actions are incommensurable. And there is no greatness where simplicity, goodness, and truth are absent. ”

“ Hardly any act is conceivable which has not been thought by some man, somewhere, somehow, morally right or morally wrong. If all that we can do is, to choose out those instances of morality which seem to us most right, and impute them to God, shall we not have an ever-shifting, probably a merely conventional standard of right and wrong? ”