This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Moral ambiguity creates mental cramps of various sorts, which lead to reflection, discussion, and argument… Morality resists theoretical unification under either a set of special-purpose rules or single general-purpose rule or principle, such as the categorical imperative or the principle of unity. If this is right, and if it is right because the ends of moral life are plural and heterogeneous in kind and because our practices of moral education rightly reflect this, then we have some greater purchase on why the project of finding a single theoretically satisfying moral theory has failed.
Ambiguity | Argument | Discussion | Education | Ends | Life | Life | Morality | Purpose | Purpose | Reflection | Right | Rule | Unity | Theoretical |
This is the difference between religion and philosophy. Religion begins with the sense of the ineffable; philosophy ends with the sense of the ineffable. Religion begins where philosophy ends.
Ends | Philosophy | Religion | Sense |
Immoral means cannot bring moral ends, for the ends are pre-existent in the means.
We must come to see that peace is not merely a distant goal we seek, but it is a means by which we arrive at that goal. We must pursue peaceful ends through peaceful means.
Evolution begins and ends with the purposes of God.
Everything begins in mysticism and ends in politics.
Eleanor Roosevelt, fully Anna Eleanor Roosevelt
In the long run we shape our lives and we shape ourselves. The process never ends until we die. And the choices we make are ultimately our own responsibility.
Ends | Responsibility |
A liar begins with making falsehood appear like truth and ends with making truth itself appear like falsehood.
The machine is one of the most compelling rational of human discoveries. The madness is in those who would use a rational thing to further the irrational ends of exploitation and domination.
Thomas Edison, fully Thomas Alva Edison
Being busy does not always mean real work. The object of all work is production or accomplishment and to either of these ends there must be forethought, system, planning, intelligence, and honest purpose, as well as perspiration. Seeming to do is not doing.
Accomplishment | Ends | Forethought | Intelligence | Object | Purpose | Purpose | System | Work |