“So Vice is beneficial found,
When it's by Justice lopt and bound;
Nay, where the People would be great,
As necessary to the State,
As Hunger is to make 'em eat.
Bare Virtue can't make Nations live
In Splendor; they, that would revive
A Golden Age, must be as free,
For Acorns, as for Honesty.”
"The Moral", line 17, p. 24
The Fable of the Bees (1714)
Help us to complete the source, original and additional information
Bernard Mandeville 35
Anglo-Dutch writer and physician 1670–1733Related quotes
June 1784, p. 526 http://books.google.com/books?id=FMoIAAAAQAAJ&q="Courage+is+a+quality+so+necessary+for+maintaining+virtue+that+it+is+always+respected+even+when+it+is+associated+with+vice"&pg=PA319#v=onepage
Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), Vol IV
“Justice is a virtue, but not one that makes people lovable.”
Justice (1993)
“People with golden hearts would make capitalism or communism or socialism work beautifully.”
"The Death of Me", p. 151
Awareness (1992)
Context: A Jesuit once wrote a note to Father Arrupe, his superior general, asking him about the relative value of communism, socialism and capitalism. Father Arrupe gave him a lovely reply. He said, "A system is about as good or as bad as the people who use it." People with golden hearts would make capitalism or communism or socialism work beautifully.
“You who make the laws, the vices and the virtues of the people will be your work.”
(Autumn 1792) [Source: Oeuvres Complètes de Saint-Just, vol. 1 (2 vols., Paris, 1908), p. 380]
The Things They Carried (1990), On the Rainy River
Observations on the Drawing Up of Laws (1774)
Context: In any country where talent and virtue produce no advancement, money will be the national god. Its inhabitants will either have to possess money or make others believe that they do. Wealth will be the highest virtue, poverty the greatest vice. Those who have money will display it in every imaginable way. If their ostentation does not exceed their fortune, all will be well. But if their ostentation does exceed their fortune they will ruin themselves. In such a country, the greatest fortunes will vanish in the twinkling of an eye. Those who don't have money will ruin themselves with vain efforts to conceal their poverty. That is one kind of affluence: the outward sign of wealth for a small number, the mask of poverty for the majority, and a source of corruption for all.
Acceptance Speech as the 1964 Republican Presidential candidate. Variants and derivatives of this that are often quoted include:
Extremism in defense of liberty is no vice. Tolerance in the face of tyranny is no virtue.
Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. And moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.
Moderation in the protection of liberty is no virtue; extremism in the defense of freedom is no vice.
