If the reader wishes to form an impartial judgment as to what the fundamental problems of Ethics really are, and what is the true answer to them, it is of the first importance that he should not confine himself to reading works of any one single type, but should realize what extremely different sorts of things have seemed to different writers, of acknowledged reputation, to be the most important things to be said about the subject.
G. E. Moore, Ethics, London, 1912, p. 253
I do not think that the world or the sciences would ever have suggested to me any philosophical problems. What has suggested philosophical problems to me is things which other philosophers have said about the world or the sciences.
G. E. Moore, ‘Autobiography’, in Paul Arthur Schilpp (ed.), The Philosophy of G. E. Moore, Chicago, 1942, p. 14
My dear sirs, what we want to know from you as ethical teachers, is not how people use a word; it is not even, what kind of actions they approve, which the use of this word ‘good’ may certainly imply: what we want to know is simply what is good.
G. E. Moore, Principia Ethica, Cambridge, 1903, chap. 1, sect. 11