Adam Smith was aware of the way that economic interests could have a distorting and destructive effect both on the market and on politics.

It is often difficult to know about one's own era which philosophers in it will be remembered as the most important ones, but I think it is already clear that John Rawls is the greatest moral philosopher of the twentieth century.

If we decide rightly what to do, or use a correct procedure for making such decisions, that has to be because the decisions or the procedure rest on good reasons, and these reasons consist in the apprehension of truths about what we ought to do. Because these truths must constitute reasons for our decisions, and because in the rational order, reasons must always precede the decisions based on them, the truth conditions of claims about what we ought to cannot be reduced to, or constructed out of, decisions about what to do, or procedures for making such decisions.

Teaching and writing about philosophy is about the only thing I've ever been really good at.

Some of Kant's particular moral opinions, either because he shared the prejudices of his time, or because of his own personal crotchets, can strike sensible people as ridiculous or offensive. But in my view, his own theory provides us with the resources (the best resources available, I believe) to correct his own personal errors or cultural prejudices.

Kant attempted to work out a view of religion and religious belief according to which existing religions could be brought into harmony with modernity, science and reason.

What is central to morality is rational self-constraint (acting from duty), in cease where there is no other incentive to do your duty except that the moral law commands it.