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“Institutions that do not recognize that their officers' incentives are not consistent with the goals of the institution will necessarily be corrupted in the long run.”
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“People do not always remember that politics, economics, and social organization generally, belong in the realm of means, not ends... a society does not, or at least should not, exist to satisfy an external survey, but to bring a good life to the individuals who compose it.”
― individual and social ethics
― individual and social ethics
“When a person expresses a view which seems to us obviously absurd... we should try to understand how it ever came to seem true [to them]. This exercise of imagination enlarges the scope of our thinking and helps us to realize how foolish many of our own cherished prejudices will seem to an age which has a different temper of mind.”
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“No living organism can exist isolated from the biotic and abiotic factors that surround it, and its evolutionary success or failure is governed by the extent to which it responds to these factors.”
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“All the grand sources of human suffering are in a great degree conquerable by human care and effort; and though their conquest is grievously slow, and though a long succession of generations will perish in the breach before the conquest is completed - when this world becomes all that, if will and knowledge were not wanting, it might easily be made - yet every mind to bear a part however small and inconspicuous, in the endeavor, will draw a noble enjoyment from the contest itself, and would not for any brine consent to be without.”
― Utilitarianism
― Utilitarianism
Political Philosophy and Ethics
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Study and discussion of the important questions of ethical and political philosophy from Confucius and Socrates to the present. Rules (see also the ...more
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