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

In any matter of moral importance, our first task, before we plunge ahead and decide what to do, is to figure out what we ought to do.

I don't think Kant's theory looks bad to people except insofar as they have misunderstood it (for instance, as heartless and ironheaded, or as committed to an absurd metaphysical conception of freedom that violates Kant's own philosophy).

There is no author or legislator of the moral law. It is simply valid in itself in the nature or essence of things. We become autonomous only when we obey it, because then our will aligns itself with the objectively valid law, and our choice follows the same law as that we give ourselves. We can think of rational faculty (or the idea - the pure rational concept, not exhibitable in experience) as the legislator or author of the law because reason recognizes an objective standard, and to that extent is already aligned with objective moral truth.

What are we to think of the shortsightedness of the great mass of people who are content to do nothing about it, and even worse, the greed or venality of the rich and powerful who deliberately bar the way to human survival?

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

Empiricist philosophy always tends to be anti-philosophy (and is often proud of it).