“How are you going to teach virtue if you teach the relativity of all ethical ideas? Virtue, if it implies anything at all, implies an ethical absolute. A person whose idea of what is proper varies from day to day can be admired for his broadmindedness, but not for his virtue.”

— Robert M. Pirsig , book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

Source: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (1974), Ch. 29

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Robert M. Pirsig 164

American writer and philosopher 1928–2017

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“Lightning hits!
Quality! Virtue! Dharma! That is what the Sophists were teaching! Not ethical relativism. Not pristine "virtue." But aretê. Excellence. Dharma!”

Robert M. Pirsig book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

Source: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (1974), Ch. 29
Context: Lightning hits!
Quality! Virtue! Dharma! That is what the Sophists were teaching! Not ethical relativism. Not pristine "virtue." But aretê. Excellence. Dharma! Before the Church of Reason. Before substance. Before form. Before mind and matter. Before dialectic itself. Quality had been absolute. Those first teachers of the Western world were teaching Quality, and the medium they had chosen was that of rhetoric.

“(…) Sin and virtue refer to a person only. Without a sinful or virtuous person what is sin or virtue? At the level of the absolute there are no persons; the ocean of pure awareness is neither virtuous nor sinful. Sin and virtue are invariably relative.”

Nisargadatta Maharaj (1897–1981) Indian guru

Sin and virtue
Source: "I am That." P.71.

“Morgenbesser described Gentile ethics as entailing “ought implies can” while in Jewish ethics “can implies don’t.””

Sidney Morgenbesser (1921–2004) American philosopher

The Times, Sidney Morgenbesser: Erudite and influential American linguistic philosopher with the analytical acuity of Spinoza and the blunt wit of Groucho Marx https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/sidney-morgenbesser-5cz8gg8qfvm, September 8, 2004.

“Virtue, my pet, is an abstract idea, varying in its manifestations with the surroundings.”

Honoré de Balzac (1799–1850) French writer

Part I, ch. XVIII.
Letters of Two Brides (1841-1842)
Context: Virtue, my pet, is an abstract idea, varying in its manifestations with the surroundings. Virtue in Provence, in Constantinople, in London, and in Paris bears very different fruit, but is none the less virtue.

“Ultimately there are but three systems of ethics, three conceptions of the ideal character and the moral life. One is that of Buddha and Jesus, which stresses the feminine virtues, considers all men to be equally precious, resists evil only by returning good, identifies virtue with love, and inclines in politics to unlimited democracy. Another is the ethic of Machiavelli and Nietzsche, which stresses the masculine virtues, accepts the inequality of men, relishes the risks of combat and conquest and rule, identifies virtue with power, and exalts an hereditary aristocracy. A third, the ethic of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, denies the universal applicability of either the feminine or the masculine virtues; considers that only the informed and mature mind can judge, according to diverse circumstance, when love should rule, and when power; identifies virtue, therefore, with intelligence; and advocates a varying mixture of aristocracy and democracy in government. It is the distinction of Spinoza that his ethic unconsciously reconciles these apparently hostile philosophies, weaves them into a harmonious unity, and gives us in consequence a system of morals which is the supreme achievement of modern thought.”

Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) Dutch philosopher

Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1961)
A - F

“Poverty is a virtue which one can teach oneself.”

Diogenes of Sinope (-404–-322 BC) ancient Greek philosopher, one of the founders of the Cynic philosophy

Stobaeus, iv. 32a. 19
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“Teach your children to work, teach your daughters modesty, teach all the virtue of economy. And if not make them saints, at least make them Christians.”

António de Oliveira Salazar (1889–1970) Prime Minister of Portugal

Quoted in Salazar: biographical study - page 285; of Franco Nogueira - Published by Atlantis Publishing, 1977

“I do nothing but go about persuading you all, old and young alike, not to take thought for your persons or your properties, but and chiefly to care about the greatest improvement of the soul. I tell you that virtue is not given by money, but that from virtue comes money and every other good of man, public as well as private. This is my teaching, and if this is the doctrine which corrupts the youth, I am a mischievous person.”

Socrates (-470–-399 BC) classical Greek Athenian philosopher

30a–b
Plato, Apology

“It is the enemy who can truly teach us to practice the virtues of compassion and tolerance.”

Tenzin Gyatso (1935) spiritual leader of Tibet

Ocean of Wisdom: Guidelines for Living (1989) ISBN 094066609X
Unsourced variant: In the practice of tolerance, one's enemy is the best teacher.

“A man is free in proportion to the measure of his virtues, and the extent to which he is free determines what his virtues can accomplish.”
Et pro virtutum habitu quilibet et liber est, et, quatenus est liber, eatenus virtutibus pollet.

John of Salisbury Policraticus

Bk. 7, ch. 25
Policraticus (1159)

“How are you going to teach virtue if you teach the relativity of all ethical ideas? Virtue, if it implies anything at all, implies an ethical absolute. A person whose idea of what is proper varies from day to day can be admired for his broadmindedness, but not for his virtue.”

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Robert M. Pirsig 164

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