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When you look closely it is a question whether that which is a wrong to the present community may not prove to have been a right to the interests of posterity. That sounds a little foggy; but I will make my meaning more clear when I say that I think right and wrong are both tools which are being wielded by those great hands which are shaping the destinies of the universe, that both are making for improvement; but that the action of the one is immediate, and that of the other more slow, but none the less certain. Our own distinction of right and wrong is founded too much upon the immediate convenience of the community, and does not inquire sufficiently deeply into the ultimate effect.

Arthur Conan Doyle#4

EthicsFutureHistoryProgressTime

About this quote

What does it mean?
Right and wrong are tools for long-term improvement, though immediate effects differ.
In plain terms
What is right now might be wrong later, and both help the future.
What can you take from it?
Look beyond immediate convenience to see long-term effects.

Where it applies

  • policy making
  • historical analysis
  • conflict resolution

Putting it to work

  • weighing long-term impacts
  • rethinking moral labels

Questions to consider

  • How do we judge the past?
  • Is morality absolute or relative?

Another view

It risks justifying harmful actions by claiming future benefits.

More from Arthur Conan Doyle

  1. The more we progress the more we tend to progress. We advance not in arithmetical but in geometrical progression. We draw compound interest on the whole capita…

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  2. I should dearly love that the world should be ever so little better for my presence. Even on this small stage we have our two sides, and something might be don…

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  3. These pictures are not occult, but they are psychic because everything that emanates from the human spirit or human brain is psychic. It is not supernatural; n…

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