For many years the best minds in moral philosophy have been less concerned with the content of morality than with its form, less with the actual trut… - R. W. K. Paterson

Sceptics often make much of the alleged mysteriousness of values—by which, however, they mean little more than that they are claimed to be essentially different from all classes of physical objects and properties, mental states and properties, historical facts, mathematical theorems, scientific concepts, or whatever. In other words, their objection is simply that values are claimed to be of their nature different everything which is not of its nature a value.

Although he [the plebeian] cannot deny that selfless courage and unswerving rectitude—indeed all the qualities of the patrician—exist as dreams in men’s minds, his mission is to destroy any belief that they have ever influenced, or ever could influence, the motive, character, and conduct of actual men and women. Whenever such ideals are put before us, he wants us to react to them as simply unbelievable.

… the plebeian tendency to become engrossed with the means and to avert one’s eyes from the end