40 Quotes by Alasdair MacIntyre

The introduction of the word ‘intuition’ by a moral philosopher is always a signal that something has gone badly wrong with an argument.

Plato in both the Gorgias and the Republic looked back to Socrates and asserted that "it is better to suffer tortures on the rack than to have a soul burdened with the guilt of doing evil." Aristotle does not confront this position directly: he merely emphasizes that it is better still both to be free from having done evil and to be free from being tortured on the rack.

To call the Form [of the Good] eternal is misleading: that something lasts forever does not render it any the better, any more than long-enduring whiteness is whiter than ephemeral whiteness.

History is neither a prison nor a museum, nor is it a set of materials for self-congratulation.

The attempted professionalization of serious and systematic thinking has had a disastrous effect upon our culture

Man is ... essentially a story-telling animal. That means I can only answer the question 'what am I to do?' if I can answer the prior question of 'what story or stories do I find myself a part of?

It is a necessary condition of rationality that a man shall formulate his beliefs in such a way that it is clear what evidence would be evidence against them and that he shall lay himself open to criticism and refutation ... But to foreclose on tolerance is precisely to cut oneself off from such criticism and refutation. It is gravely to endanger one's own rationality by not admitting one's own fallibility.

I can be said truly to know who and what I am only because there are others who can be said truly to know who and what I am.

(We) are never able to seek for the good or exercise the virtues only qua individual ... we all approach our own circumstances as bearers of a particular social identity. I am someone's son or daughter, a citizen of this or that city. I belong to this clan, that tribe, this nation. ... I inherit from the past of my family, my city, my tribe, my nation, a variety of debts, inheritances, expectations and obligations.