Moral crusaders with zeal but no ethical understanding are likely to give us solutions that are worse than the problems.
Interpretation
Moral zeal without ethical understanding can lead to harmful solutions.
This quote emphasizes that simply having a strong moral stance may not guarantee effective solutions to problems. It suggests that a deeper ethical understanding is crucial in formulating responses to societal issues; otherwise, the solutions proposed may exacerbate existing problems rather than resolve them.
In practice
Using this quote in a discussion about ethics in social policy.
The life function of [the local church] is to love the God who created it - to care for others out of obedience to Christ, to heal those who hurt, to take away fear, to restore community, to belong to one another, to proclaim the Good News while living it out. The church is the invisible made visible.
Life is a mess. And theology must be lived out in the midst of that mess.
Tolerance once meant that we could use our reason to discern good and evil in open debate. Today tolerance has been used to call good evil and evil good.
People who cannot restrain their own baser instincts, who cannot treat one another with civility, are not capable of self-government... without virtue, a society can be ruled only by fear, a truth that tyrants understand all too well
One of the most wonderful things about being a Christian is that I don't ever get up in the morning and wonder if what I do matters. I live every day to the fullest because I can live it through Christ and I know no matter what I do today, I'm going to do something to advance the Kingdom of God.
I learned one thing in Watergate: I was well-intentioned but rationalized illegal behavior. You cannot live your life other than walking in the truth. Your means are as important as your ends.
For this is the journey that men and women make, to find themselves. If they fail in this, it doesn't matter much else what they find.
Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.
It is impossible - now, at this point in the long journey of human culture - to avoid the sense that pain is necessity; that it is neither accident, nor malformation, nor malice, nor misunderstanding, that it is integral to the human character both in its inflicting and in its suffering, this terrible sense Tragedy alone has articulated, and will continue to articulate, and in so doing, make beautiful...
But to my mind, though I am native here, And to the manner born, it is a custom, More honored in the breach than the observance.
Give us that grand word 'woman' once again, and let's have done with 'lady'; one's a term full of fine force, strong, beautiful, and firm, fit for the noblest use of tongue or pen; and one's a word for lackeys.
The most interesting thing in the world is another human being who wonders, suffers and raises the questions that have bothered him to the last day of his life, knowing he will never get the answers.
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