I have now come to the conclusion (roughly) that capital punishment is defensible, if it can be shown to have a deterrent effect on murder. In that case, a few executions save not only some people from being murdered but also some people from becoming murders.

We can be certain that, if there are conflicting views in different cultures, some of these views must be false. This may help us to transcend our own narrow cultural horizon.

I am indeed a moral realist.

What we need is legislation, not negotiation, for the entire globe.

Normative ethics, pursued as a free, systematic, and critical attempt to find moral truth, regardless of religious and other authorities, is a rather new adventure. Let's wait and see what will happen!

The kind of values for which I was supposed to kill, such as democracy and national independence, were better served, I thought, through non-violent action.

If two norms conflict, if they are mutually inconsistent, then at least one of them must be false.