Quote of the Day by British philosopher R. M. Hare: ‘The ordinary man so very rarely questions the principles in which he has been brought up, that he is usually willing, whenever he has a feeling that…'’

Think about a decision you made because it felt like the ‘right thing to do.’ Maybe you followed a rule your parents taught you. Maybe you rejected an idea because everyone around you had always called it wrong. Or perhaps you simply told yourself, ‘This is what I’m supposed to do,’ without stopping to ask where that feeling came from.

Most of us rarely examine the rules we inherit. They become part of everyday life, so we mistake familiarity for truth. We follow them at home, at work and in relationships, often without asking whether they still make sense.

But what happens when the rule we have been taught conflicts with the situation in front of us? And how often do we call something morally right simply because we have been conditioned to believe it is?


British philosopher R. M. Hare spent much of his career examining precisely this problem: how people make moral judgments and whether those judgments can withstand rational scrutiny.

Quote of the Day by R. M. Hare: “The ordinary man so very rarely questions the principles in which he has been brought up, that he is usually willing, whenever he has a feeling that he ought to do 'x', to say on this ground that he ought to do 'x'.”

Why R. M. Hare’s quote on morality and critical thinking matters today

It is easy to assume that something is right simply because it is familiar. Families, communities and cultures pass down ideas about what people should do, what they should avoid and what makes someone a “good” person. Those ideas can provide useful guidance, but they can also go unquestioned for generations.

Hare’s point is not simply that traditional values are wrong. Instead, he asks us to examine the reasoning behind our moral judgments. Feeling that something is right is not necessarily the same as being able to explain why it is right.

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That distinction matters in everyday life. People make moral choices about relationships, work, politics, parenting and social issues. In many cases, the hardest part is not knowing what we believe. It is understanding why we believe it.

What R. M. Hare’s quote means in real life

Imagine someone who has always been told that a particular career is respectable and another is not. They grow up accepting that distinction, choose the “right” career and eventually encourage their own children to make the same choice. They may never stop to ask whether the judgment came from genuine reasoning or simply from the environment in which they were raised.

The same pattern can appear in relationships and social behavior. We inherit ideas about loyalty, success, gender roles, family obligations and acceptable behavior. Some may be valuable principles that help people live together. Others may deserve to be questioned. Hare encourages a deeper step between “I feel that I ought to do this” and “I have good reasons for believing that I ought to do this.”

His philosophy makes an important distinction between everyday moral intuition and more critical moral thinking. Intuitive rules can be useful because people cannot constantly analyze every decision from first principles. But when a difficult moral conflict appears, we may need to step back and examine whether our instinctive response can be defended consistently.

Who was R. M. Hare?

Richard Mervyn Hare, better known as R. M. Hare, was a major British moral philosopher of the 20th century. Born in 1919, he studied at Oxford and later became a professor there. He spent much of World War II as a Japanese prisoner of war before returning to complete his education and begin his academic career.

Hare became particularly influential for his work on moral language and moral reasoning. His early work explored what people mean when they use statements such as “you ought to do X.” He argued that moral statements are not simply descriptions of facts. They are prescriptive, meaning they tell us something about what should be done.

R. M. Hare and his moral philosophy

Hare eventually developed what became known as universal prescriptivism. In simple terms, his view held that moral judgments should be both prescriptive and universal. If we say an action is morally wrong in a particular situation, we should be prepared to apply the same judgment consistently when the relevant circumstances are reversed.

Another major contribution was his distinction between two levels of moral thinking: intuitive and critical. Intuitive thinking allows people to rely on practical moral rules in everyday situations. Critical thinking requires stepping back, considering the consequences and examining whether a moral judgment can be justified consistently.

Hare's work eventually led him toward utilitarianism; he treated moral philosophy as a practical tool for examining how people reason about difficult questions. His work continues to raise an uncomfortable but useful question: Are we doing what we believe is right because we have thought it through, or because we were simply taught to believe it was right?