Skip to content

In one important sense of the word it is a paradigm case of injustice if a court declares someone to be guilty of an offence of which it knows him to be innocent. More generally, a finding is unjust if it is at variance with what the relevant law and the facts together require, and particularly if it is known by the court to be so.

— J. L. Mackie Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong (1977)

Another quote →

More quotes by J. L. Mackie

We want people to see it as not only legitimate but right and proper that they should pursue what they see as their own well-being.

Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong (1977)

Life is, fortunately, not a continuous application of game theory.

Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong (1977)

Mankind is not an agent; it has no unity of decision; it is therefore not confronted with any choices.

Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong (1977)

The difficulty of seeing how values could be objective is a fairly strong reason for thinking that they are not so.

Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong (1977)

Morality is not to be discovered but to be made: we have to decide what moral views to adopt, what moral stands to take.

Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong (1977)

All J. L. Mackie quotes →

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: J. L. Mackie (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.