Quotes about virtue (2023 quotes, page 8)

“We are far more liable to catch the vices than the virtues of our associates.”

Denis Diderot (1713–1784) French Enlightenment philosopher and encyclopædist

As quoted in Thesaurus of Epigrams: A New Classified Collection of Witty Remarks, Bon Mots and Toasts (1942) by Edmund Fuller

“It is above all the impersonal and economically rationalized (but for this very reason ethically irrational) character of purely commercial relationships that evokes the suspicion, never clearly expressed but all the more strongly felt, of ethical religions. For every purely personal relationship of man to man, of whatever sort and even including complete enslavement, may be subjected to ethical requirements and ethically regulated. This is true because the structures of these relationships depend upon the individual wills of the participants, leaving room in such relations for manifestations of the virtue of charity. But this is not the situation in the realm of economically rationalised relationships, where personal control is exercised in inverse ratio to the degree of rational differentiation of the economic structure.”

Max Weber (1864–1920) German sociologist, philosopher, and political economist

Source: Sociology of Religion (1922), pp. 216-217

Religion , Exercises , Dependency , Personality

“Work, mental or manual, is the means whereby attention is compelled, it is the instrument of all knowledge and virtue, the root whence all excellence springs.”

John Lancaster Spalding (1840–1916) Catholic bishop

Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 116

Spring , Knowledge

“The idea of vocation I picked up in those circles created distortion until I grew strong enough to discard it. I mean the idea that vocation, or calling, comes from a voice external to ourselves, a voice of moral demand that asks us to become someone we are not yet—someone different, someone better, someone just beyond our reach.
That concept of vocation is rooted in a deep distrust of selfhood, in the belief that the sinful self will always be “selfish” unless corrected by external forces of virtue. It is a notion that made me feel inadequate to the task of living my own life, creating guilt about the distance between who I was and who I was supposed to be.”

Parker Palmer (1939) American theologian

Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation (1999)

Life , Feeling , Idea , Strong

“Happiness and Prosperity are now within our Reach; but to attain and preserve them must depend upon our own Wisdom and Virtue.”

George Mason (1725–1792) American delegate from Virginia to the U.S. Constitutional Convention

Letter to William Cabell (6 May 1783)

Wisdom , Dependency , Happiness

“And he wanted a wife. He wanted to raise children. He wanted to prove that goodness wasn’t beaten into children, that fear was not the fount from which virtue flowed. He wanted to be able to gather his family in his arms and know that not one of them dreaded the sight of him, or felt the need to lie to him in order to have his love.”

Orson Scott Card (1951) American science fiction novelist

(Chapter reference needed).
The Tales of Alvin Maker, Alvin Journeyman (1995)

Love , Children , Lie , Fear

“Gravity is a mutual affection between cognate bodies towards union or conjunction (similar in kind to the magnetic virtue), so that the earth attracts a stone much rather than the stone seeks the earth.”

Johannes Kepler book Astronomia nova

As quoted by Bryant, ibid., pp. 35–36
Astronomia nova (1609)

“I come to you tonight with a plea that we stop seeking out the storms and enjoy more fully the sunlight. I am suggesting that as we go through life we try to "accentuate the positive." I am asking that we look a little deeper for the good, that we still our voices of insult and sarcasm, that we more generously compliment virtue and effort.”

Gordon B. Hinckley (1910–2008) President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

Be Not Afraid, Only Believe, CES Fireside for Young Adults, September 9, 2001.

Life , Effort

“Morally, it is wrong to suppose the source of evil is outside oneself, that one is a vessel of holiness running over with virtue. Such a disposition is the best soil for a hateful and cruel fanaticism. It is as wrong to impute every wickedness to Jews, Freemasons, "intellectuals," as it is to blame all crimes on the bourgeoisie, the nobility, and the powers that were. No; the root of evil is in me as well, and I must take my share of the responsibility and the blame. That was true before the revolution and it is true still.”

Nikolai Berdyaev (1874–1948) Russian philosopher

Source: The End of Our Time (1919), p. 128

Hate , Evil

“The "pursuit of happiness" in the Declaration of Independence didn't mean radical individualism. It meant the pursuit of virtue.”

Harry V. Jaffa (1918–2015) American historian and collegiate professor

2000s, Interview with Peter Robinson (2009)

Happiness

“The portrait I have to paint is of…an ambiguous character, a mixture of virtues and vices, a perpetual contrast between good impulses and bad actions.”

Antoine François Prévost (1697–1763) French novelist

J'ai à peindre…un caractère ambigu, un mélange de vertus et de vices, un contraste perpétuel de bons sentiments et d'actions mauvaises.
Avis de l'auteur, p. 30; translation p. 3.
L'Histoire du chevalier des Grieux et de Manon Lescaut (1731)

Painting

“I believe that courage is morally neutral. I can well imagine wicked people being brave and good people being timid or afraid. I don't consider it a moral virtue.”

Susan Sontag (1933–2004) American writer and filmmaker, professor, and activist

Salon interview (2001)

People , Imagination , Courage

“Virtues are, in the popular estimate, rather the exception than the rule. There is the man and his virtues. Men do what is called a good action, as some piece of courage or charity, much as they would pay a fine in expiation of daily non-appearance on parade. Their works are done as an apology or extenuation of their living in the world, — as invalids and the insane pay a high board. Their virtues are penances. I do not wish to expiate, but to live. My life is for itself and not for a spectacle.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

1840s, Essays: First Series (1841), Self-Reliance

Life , Men , World , Courage

“I will not be modest. Humble, as much as you like, but not modest. Modesty is the virtue of the lukewarm.”

Jean Paul Sartre book The Devil and the Good Lord

Act 4, sc. 5
The Devil and the Good Lord (1951)

“The “noble” person has a completely naïve and non-reflective awareness of his own value and of his fullness of being, an obscure conviction which enriches every conscious moment of his existence, as if he were autonomously rooted in the universe. This should not be mistaken for “pride.” Quite on the contrary, pride results from an experienced diminution of this “naive” self-confidence. It is a way of “holding on” to one’s value, of seizing and “preserving” it deliberately. The noble man’s naive self-confidence, which is as natural to him as tension is to the muscles, permits him calmly to assimilate the merits of others in all the fullness of their substance and configuration. He never “grudges” them their merits. On the contrary: he rejoices in their virtues and feels that they make the world more worthy of love. His naive self-confidence is by no means “compounded” of a series of positive valuations based on specific qualities, talents, and virtues: it is originally directed at his very essence and being. Therefore he can afford to admit that another person has certain “qualities” superior to his own or is more “gifted” in some respects—indeed in all respects. Such a conclusion does not diminish his naïve awareness of his own value, which needs no justification or proof by achievements or abilities. Achievements merely serve to confirm it. On the other hand, the “common” man (in the exact acceptation of the term) can only experience his value and that of another if he relates the two, and he clearly perceives only those qualities which constitute possible differences. The noble man experiences value prior to any comparison, the common man in and through a comparison. For the latter, the relation is the selective precondition for apprehending any value. Every value is a relative thing, “higher” or “lower,” “more” or “less” than his own. He arrives at value judgments by comparing himself to others and others to himself.”

Max Scheler (1874–1928) German philosopher

Source: Das Ressentiment im Aufbau der Moralen (1912), L. Coser, trans. (1973), pp. 54-55

Love , World , Way , Feeling

“Virtue runs no risk of becoming contemptible by being exposed to view, and it is better to be despised for simplicity than to be tormented by continual hypocrisy.”

Seneca the Younger (-4–65 BC) Roman Stoic philosopher, statesman, and dramatist

On Tranquility of the Mind

“… The past and the present call on you to advance. Let what you have gained be an impulse to something higher. Your nature is too great to be crushed. You were not created what you are, merely to toil, eat, drink, and sleep, like the inferior animals. If you will, you can rise. No power in society, no hardship in your condition can depress you, keep you down, in knowledge, power, virtue, influence, but by your own consent. Do not be lulled to sleep by the flatteries which you hear, as if your participation in the national sovereignty made you equal to the noblest of your race. You have many and great deficiencies to be remedied; and the remedy lies, not in the ballot-box, not in the exercise of your political powers, but in the faithful education of yourselves and your children...”

William Ellery Channing (1780–1842) United States Unitarian clergyman

Self-Culture (1838)

Children , Education , Faith , Exercises

“Whereas we are tremendously proud of the accomplishments of the White Race throughout the span of history and civilization, we are not particularly proud of the cowardly and idiotic position the present generation has allowed itself to degenerate into. Nevertheless, the White Race is Nature's Elite, the highest living creature it has produced in all the eons of time. We CREATORS, being members of this Elite, are supremely interested in the welfare and the future for the White Race. We are interested in saving the White Race not so much for what it is today, but what its brilliant future potential can be if it will proceed on a deliberate program of up-breeding itself and improving its world. Our program and our creed are designed to promote those best interests of the White Race so that it can achieve the tremendous potential that is its true destiny. Therefore the heart of our creed is this: What is good for the White Race is the highest virtue; what is the bad for the White Race is the ultimate sin.”

Ben Klassen (1918–1993) American engineer, author and politician

White Man's Bible (1983)
White Man's Bible (1983)

World , History , Nature , Time

“It is vain to expect virtue from women till they are in some degree independent of men; nay, it is vain to expect that strength of natural affection which would make them good wives and mothers. Whilst they are absolutely dependent on their husbands they will be cunning, mean, and selfish.”

Mary Wollstonecraft book A Vindication of the Rights of Woman

Source: A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), Ch. 9

Women , Men , Nature , Dependency

“In heav'n, the saint nor pity feels, nor care,
For those thus sentenced - pity might disturb
The delicate sense and most divine repose
Of spiritus angelical
Blessed be God,
The measure of his judgments is not fixed
By man's erroneous standard. He discerns
No such inordinate difference and vast
Betwixt the sinner and the saint, to doom
Such disproportion'd fates.
Compared with him,
No man on earth is holy called: they best
Stand in his sight approved, who at his feet
Their little crowns of virtue cast, and yield,
To him of his own works the praise, his due.”

Charles Lamb (1775–1834) English essayist

Composed at midnight, as quoted in The Poetical Works of Charles Lamb, p. 72.

God , Fate , Angels , Feeling

“Men call women faithless, changeable, and though they say it in jealousy of their own ever-threatened sexual honor, there is some truth in it. We can change our life, our being; no matter what our will is, we are changed. As the moon changes yet is one, so we are virgin, wife, mother, grandmother. For all their restlessness, men are who they are; once they put on the man's toga they will not change again; so they make a virtue of that rigidity and resist whatever might soften it and set them free.”

Ursula K. Le Guin book Lavinia

Source: Lavinia (2008), p. 184

Life , Women , Men , Truth

“Consent in virtue knit your hearts so fast,
That still the knot, in spite of death, does last;
For as your tears, and sorrow-wounded soul,
Prove well that on your part this bond is whole,
So all we know of what they do above,
Is that they happy are, and that they love.
Let dark oblivion, and the hollow grave,
Content themselves our frailer thoughts to have;
Well-chosen love is never taught to die,
But with our nobler part invades the sky.
Then grieve no more that one so heavenly shaped
The crooked hand of trembling age escaped;
Rather, since we beheld her not decay,
But that she vanish'd so entire away,
Her wondrous beauty, and her goodness, merit
We should suppose that some propitious spirit
In that celestial form frequented here,
And is not dead, but ceases to appear.”

Edmund Waller (1606–1687) English poet and politician

Upon the Death of My Lady Rich (1664).
Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham (1857)

Love , Death , Age , Beauty

“Having mandated me to proclaim on your behalf, and in your name, that Eastern Nigeria be a sovereign independent Republic, now, therefore I, Lieutenant Colonel Chukwuemeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu, Military Governor of Eastern Nigeria, by virtue of the authority, and pursuant to the principles recited above, do hereby solemnly proclaim that the territory and region known as and called Eastern Nigeria together with her continental shelf and territorial waters, shall, henceforth, be an independent sovereign state of the name and title of The Republic of Biafra.”

Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu (1933–2011) Nigerian politician and military leader

30 May, 1967, as quoted by Bernard Odogwu (1985) No Place To Hide – Crises And Conflicts Inside Biafra.

Water

“Thus in the time of our pain and our woe He sheweth us Cheer of His Passion and His Cross, helping us to bear it by His own blessed virtue. And in the time of our sinning He sheweth to us Cheer of Ruth and Pity, mightily keeping us and defending us against all our enemies. And these be the common Cheer which He sheweth to us in this life; therewith mingling the third: and that is His Blissful Cheer, like, in part, as it shall be in Heaven. And that by gracious touching and sweet lighting of the spiritual life, whereby that we are kept in sure faith, hope, and charity, with contrition and devotion, and also with contemplation and all manner of true solace and sweet comforts.”

Julian of Norwich (1342–1416) English theologian and anchoress

The Sixteenth Revelation, Chapter 71

Life , Pain , Faith , Hope

“If these Commentaries shall but inspire in the rising generation a more ardent love of their country, an unquenchable thirst for liberty, and a profound reverence for the constitution and the union, then they will have accomplished all that their author ought to desire. Let the American youth never forget that they possess a noble inheritance, bought by the toils, and sufferings, and blood of their ancestors; and capable, if wisely improved, and faithfully guarded, of transmitting to their latest posterity all the substantial blessings of life, the peaceful enjoyment of liberty, property, religion, and independence. The structure has been erected by architects of consummate skill and fidelity; its foundations are solid; its compartments are beautiful as well as useful; its arrangements are full of wisdom and order; and its defences are impregnable from without. It has been reared for immortality, if the work of man may justly aspire to such a title. It may, nevertheless, perish in an hour by the folly, or corruption, or negligence of its only keepers, THE PEOPLE. Republics are created by the virtue, public spirit, and intelligence of the citizens. They fall, when the wise are banished from the public councils, because they dare to be honest, and the profligate are rewarded, because they flatter the people in order to betray them.”

Joseph Story book Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States

Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States, 2d ed. (1851), vol. 2, chapter 45, p. 617. This passage was not in the first edition, but in all later editions.

Love , Life , Wisdom , People

“Andrew Jackson neatly resolved the issue by walking into congress and placing his hand on the Bible they kept there as a reminder of all the virtues they worked so hard to get the voters to believe they possessed.”

Orson Scott Card (1951) American science fiction novelist

Source: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Alvin Journeyman (1995), Chapter 19.

“Innocence most often is a good fortune and not a virtue.”

Anatole France (1844–1924) French writer

L'innocence, le plus souvent, est un bonheur et non pas une vertu.
Les Dieux Ont Soif http://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Les_Dieux_ont_soif_-_Chapitre_XV [The Gods Are Thirsty] (1912), ch. XV

“The inclination to act as the laws command, a virtue, is a synthesis in which the law … loses its universality and the subject its particularity; both lose their opposition, while in the Kantian conception of virtue this opposition remains, and the universal becomes the master and the particular the mastered.”

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831) German philosopher

The Spirit of Christianity and its Fate (1799)

Law , Universe

“This year, my Friend, is big with mighty events. Nothing less than the fate of America depends on the virtue of her sons, and if they do not have virtue enough to support the most Glorious Cause ever human beings were engaged in, they don’t deserve the blessings of freedom.”

William Whipple (1730–1785) American signatory of the Declaration of Independence

As quoted in "William Whipple" http://www.dsdi1776.com/signers-by-state/william-whipple/ (11 December 2011), The Society of the Descendants of the Signers of the Declaration of Independence

Fate , Support , Freedom , Dependency

“Persecution is a very easy form of virtue.”

John Coleridge, 1st Baron Coleridge (1820–1894) British lawyer, judge and Liberal politician

1 Cababe & Ellis' Q. B. D. Rep. 145.
Reg. v. Ramsey (1883)

“No doubt my poetry errs on the side of oddness. I hope in time to have a more balanced and Miltonic style. But as air, melody, is what strikes me most of all in music, and design in painting, so design, pattern, or what I am in the habit of calling inscape is what I above all aim at in poetry. Now it is the virtue of design, pattern, or inscape to be distinctive, and it is the vice of distinctiveness to become queer. This vice I cannot have escaped.”

Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–1889) English poet

Letter to Robert Bridges (15 February 1879)
Letters, etc

Hope , Music , Time , Painting

“Poetry is the language in which man explores his own amazement… says heaven and earth in one word… speaks of himself and his predicament as though for the first time. It has the virtue of being able to say twice as much as prose in half the time, and the drawback, if you do not give it your full attention, of seeming to say half as much in twice the time.”

Christopher Fry (1907–2005) British writer

Time, New York, April 3, 1950

Time

“Hail, blooming Youth!
May all your virtues with your years improve,
Till in consummate worth you shine the pride
Of these our days, and succeeding times
A bright example.”

William Somervile (1675–1742) English poet

Book III, line 389.
The Chace (1735)

Youth , Time

“We must frankly confess, then, using our empirical common sense and ordinary practical prejudices, that in the world that actually is, the virtues of sympathy, charity, and non-resistance may be, and often have been, manifested in excess. … You will agree to this in general, for in spite of the Gospel, in spite of Quakerism, in spite of Tolstoi, you believe in fighting fire with fire, in shooting down usurpers, locking up thieves, and freezing out vagabonds and swindlers.”

William James (1842–1910) American philosopher, psychologist, and pragmatist

Lectures XIV and XV, "The Value of Saintliness"
1900s, The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902)

World , Sense , Fight

“No woman in the world, certainly none in America, has had to battle for her virtue, for her self-respect, for her right to her own children, as has the black mother.”

Richard R. Wright Jr. (1878–1967)

Wright Jr. 87 Years Behind the Black Curtain: An Autobiography. 1965

Children , World

“A general Dissolution of Principles & Manners will more surely overthrow the Liberties of America than the whole Force of the Common Enemy. While the People are virtuous they cannot be subdued; but when once they lose their Virtue they will be ready to surrender their Liberties to the first external or internal Invader. How necessary then is it for those who are determin'd to transmit the Blessings of Liberty as a fair Inheritance to Posterity, to associate on publick Principles in Support of publick Virtue.”

Samuel Adams (1722–1803) American statesman, Massachusetts governor, and political philosopher

Letter to James Warren (12 February 1779) http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/2094

People , Support

“The first time Wednesday saw a flag she had to look away, unsure whether to laugh or cry. Patriotism had never been a huge Muscovite virtue, and to see the way the fat woman in the red pants held on to her flag as if it were a life preserver made Wednesday want to slap her and yell Grow up! It’s all over! Except it also felt like…like watching Jerm, aged three, playing with the pewter pot containing Grandpa’s ashes. Abuse of the dead, an infection of history.”

Charles Stross book Iron Sunrise

Source: Iron Sunrise (2004), Chapter 17, “Set Us Up the Bomb” (pp. 277-278)

Life , Age , Way , History

“Virtue is not always amiable. Integrity is sometimes ruined by prejudices and by passions.”

John Adams (1735–1826) 2nd President of the United States

9 February 1779
1750s, Diaries (1750s-1790s)

Passion

“Let's consider first Hayek's claim that prices in free market capitalism do not give people what they morally deserve. Hayek's deepest economic insight was that the basic function of free market prices is informational. Free market prices send signals to producers as to where their products are most in demand (and to consumers as to the opportunity costs of their options). They reflect the sum total of the inherently dispersed information about the supply and demand of millions of distinct individuals for each product. Free market prices give us our only access to this information, and then only in aggregate form. This is why centralized economic planning is doomed to failure: there is no way to collect individualized supply and demand information in a single mind or planning agency, to use as a basis for setting prices. Free markets alone can effectively respond to this information.
It's a short step from this core insight about prices to their failure to track any coherent notion of moral desert. Claims of desert are essentially backward-looking. They aim to reward people for virtuous conduct that they undertook in the past. Free market prices are essentially forward-looking. Current prices send signals to producers as to where the demand is now, not where the demand was when individual producers decided on their production plans. Capitalism is an inherently dynamic economic system. It responds rapidly to changes in tastes, to new sources of supply, to new substitutes for old products. This is one of capitalism's great virtues. But this responsiveness leads to volatile prices. Consequently, capitalism is constantly pulling the rug out from underneath even the most thoughtful, foresightful, and prudent production plans of individual agents. However virtuous they were, by whatever standard of virtue one can name, individuals cannot count on their virtue being rewarded in the free market. For the function of the market isn't to reward people for past good behavior. It's to direct them toward producing for current demand, regardless of what they did in the past.
This isn't to say that virtue makes no difference to what returns one may expect for one's productive contributions. The exercise of prudence and foresight in laying out one's production and investment plans, and diligence in carrying them out, generally improves one's odds. But sheer dumb luck is also, ineradicably, a prominent factor determining free market returns. And nobody deserves what comes to them by sheer luck.”

Elizabeth S. Anderson (1959) professor of philosophy and womens' studies

How Not to Complain About Taxes (III): "I deserve my pretax income" http://left2right.typepad.com/main/2005/01/how_not_to_comp_1.html (January 26, 2005)

People , Way , Behavior , Exercises

“Simplicity is a great virtue but it requires hard work to achieve it and education to appreciate it. And to make matters worse: complexity sells better.”

Edsger W. Dijkstra (1930–2002) Dutch computer scientist

Dijkstra (1984) On the nature of Computing Science http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD08xx/EWD896.html (EWD896).
1980s

Education

“Wise command, wise obedience: the capability of these two is the net measure of culture, and human virtue, in every man; all good lies in the possession of these two capabilities; all evil, wretchedness and ill-success in the want of these.”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

1850s, Latter-Day Pamphlets (1850), The New Downing Street (April 15, 1850)

Evil , Success

“We may compare this sum of the life forces, which we call heredity, to the character of a sensitive plate in the camera. Outside pictures impress themselves more or less distinctly on the sensitive plate… Stored within heredity are all joys, sorrows, loves, hates, music, art, temples, palaces, pyramids, hovels, kings, queens, paupers, bards, prophets and philosophers, oceans, caves, volcanoes, floods, earthquakes, wars, triumphs, defeats, reverence, courage, wisdom, virtue, love and beauty, time, space, and all the mysteries of the universe. The appropriate environments will bring out and intensify all these general human hereditary experiences and quicken them again into life and action, thus modifying for good or evil, character—heredity—destiny.”

Luther Burbank (1849–1926) American botanist, horticulturist and pioneer in agricultural science

p, 125
The Training of the Human Plant (1907)

Love , Life , Wisdom , Hate

“von Humboldt (seeing a newspaper containing slanderous falsehoods against Jefferson on the President's desk) : Why do you not have the fellow hung who dares to write these abominable lies?
Jefferson : What! hang the guardians of the public morals? No, sir, — rather would I protect the spirit of freedom which dictates even that degree of abuse. Put that paper into your pocket, my good friend, carry it with you to Europe, and when you hear any one doubt the reality of American freedom, show them that paper, and tell them where you found it.
Humboldt : But is it not shocking that virtuous characters should be defamed?
Jefferson : Let their actions refute such libels. Believe me, virtue is not long darkened by the clouds of calumny; and the temporary pain which it causes is infinitely overweighed by the safety it insures against degeneracy in the principles and conduct of public functionaries. When a man assumes a public trust, he should consider himself as public property.”

Alexander von Humboldt (1769–1859) Prussian geographer, naturalist and explorer

Conversation reported in B.L. Rayner, Life of Jefferson (1834), p. 356. The exact date is not known, but the conversation took place in one of several meetings with the President during Humboldt's visit to Washington, D.C., from June 1 to June 27, 1804.

Pain , Reality , Freedom

“In order for something to Catch On, it has to be standardized. Unfortunately, there is motivation for different companies to make their own little changes in order to restrict users to their own products. The best example of how to avoid this: Philips patented its audio cartridge [i. e. the standard audio "cassette"] to the teeth, but then granted everyone free use of the patent provided they adhered to the exact standard. The result has been the system's spectacular success, and Philips, rather than dominating a small market, has a share of a far larger market, and hence makes more money. That's a virtue-rewarded kind of story.”

Ted Nelson (1937) American information technologist, philosopher, and sociologist; coined the terms "hypertext" and "hypermedia"

Dream Machines
Computer Lib/Dream Machines (1974, rev. 1987)

Money , Motivation , Change , Success

““Machines!” the Clerk said scornfully. “We have many of them, some exquisitely complex. But event the best of them are much like idiot savants. They do adequately on tedious straightforward tasks like building stars or destroying planets. But give them something tough, like solacing a widow, and they simply go to pieces. Would you believe it, the largest computer in our section can landscape an entire planet; but it cannot fry an egg or carry a tune, and it knows less about ethics than a newborn wolf cub. Would you want something like that to run your life?”
“Of course not,” Carmody said. “But couldn’t someone build a machine with creativity and judgment?”
“Someone has,” the Clerk said. “It has been designed to learn from experience, which means that it must make errors in order to arrive at truths. It comes in many shapes and sizes, most of them quite portable. Its flaws are readily apparent, but seem to exist as necessary counterweights to it virtues. No one has yet improved on the basic design, though many have tried. This ingenious device is called ‘intelligent life.’””

Robert Sheckley book Dimension of Miracles

Source: Dimension of Miracles (1968), Chapter 3 (pp. 25-26)

Life , Truth , Error , Star

“Silver and gold are not the only coin; virtue too passes current all over the world.”

Euripidés (-480–-406 BC) ancient Athenian playwright

Œdipus, Frag. 546

World

“The judiciary has a profound and humble, but vitally important role in interpreting the law and following the law, and putting aside personal beliefs and ensuring that the law has been faithfully executed, according to the real lawmaker, which is the legislature, or in the event of an interpretation of our highest law, the Constitution, by virtue of the people themselves.”

William H. Pryor Jr. (1962) American judge

Confirmation Hearing on the Nomination of William H. Pryor, Jr. to be Circuit Judge for the Eleventh Circuit (June 11, 2003)

People , Law , Personality

“That all men are created equal does not mean that human beings are the same, or equal, in size, strength, beauty, virtue, or intelligence. There are obviously great differences in individual aptitudes and talents in sports, music, mathematics, speaking, and writing. They are also unequal in the virtues, among them courage, temperance, and justice. But as Jefferson once said, the fact that Sir Isaac Newton may be the most intelligent of living human beings does not give him any right whatever to my person or my property.”

Harry V. Jaffa (1918–2015) American historian and collegiate professor

2000s, God Bless America (2008), The American Proposition

Men , Justice , Beauty , Music

“Being a man given to oratory and high principles, he enjoyed the sound of his own vocabulary and the warmth of his own virtue.”

Sinclair Lewis book Babbitt

Babbitt (1922), Ch. 6

“To care for the quarrels of the past, to identify oneself passionately with a cause that became, politically speaking, a losing cause with the birth of the modern world, is to experience a kind of straining against reality, a rebellious nonconformity that, again, is rare in America, where children are instructed in the virtues of the system they live under, as though history had achieved a happy ending in American civics.”

Mary McCarthy book Memories of a Catholic Girlhood

"To the Reader"
Memories of a Catholic Girlhood (1957)

Children , World , History , Birth

“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

Idea , Personality

“52. To separate the body from the soul is the privilege of only of the One who has joined them together. But to separate the soul from the body lies as well in the power of the man who pursues virtue. For our Fathers gave to the meditation of death and to the flight from the body a spiritual name: anachoresis”

Evagrius Ponticus (345–399) Christian monk

withdrawal
The Praktikos

Death , Soul

“What need is there of long journeying on the land or voyaging on the seas to seek and search for virtue, whose roots have been set by their Maker ever so near us, as the wise legislator of the Jews also says, “in thy mouth, in thy heart and in thy hand,” thereby indicating in a figure, words, thoughts and actions? All these, indeed, need the cultivator’s skill. Those who prefer idleness to labor, not only prevent the growths but also wither and destroy the roots. But those who consider inaction mischievous and are willing to labor, do as the husbandman does with fine young shoots. By constant care they rear the virtues into stems rising up to heaven, saplings ever blooming and immortal, bearing and never ceasing to bear the fruits of happiness, or as some hold, not so much bearing as being in themselves that happiness. These Moses often calls by the compound name of wholefruits. In the case of growths which spring from the earth, neither are the trees the fruit nor the fruit the trees, but in the soul’s plantation the saplings of wisdom, of justice, of temperance, have their whole being transformed completely into fruits.”

Philo (-15–45 BC) Roman philosopher

68-71.
Every Good Man is Free

Wisdom , Justice , Soul , Search

“To the cosmic corpuscles we should find it natural to attribute an individual radius of action as limited as their dimensions. We find, on the contrary, that each of them can only be defined by virtue of its influence on all around it. Whatever space we suppose it to be in, each cosmic element radiates in it and entirely fills it. However narrowly the heart of an atom may be circumscribed, its realm is co-extensive, at least potentially, with that of every other atom. This strange property we will come across again, even in the human molecule.”

Pierre Teilhard De Chardin book The Phenomenon of Man

The Phenomenon of Man (1955)

Nature , Heart

“When we soar up above ourselves, And become, in our upward striving towards God, So simple, that the naked Love in the Heights can lay hold on us, There where Love cherishes Love, above all activity and all virtue (That is to say, in our Origin, wherefrom we are spiritually born)— Then we cease, and we and all that is our own die into God. And in this death we become hidden Sons of God, and find in ourselves a new life, And that is Eternal Life. And of these Sons, St. Paul says: ‘Ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God.’ In our approach to God we must bear with us ourselves and all that we do, As a perpetual sacrifice to God; And in the Presence of God we must leave ourselves and all our works, And, dying in love, soar up above all created things into the Superessential Kingdom of God.
And of this the Spirit of God speaks in the Book of Hidden Things, saying: ‘Blessed are the dead that die in the Lord.”

John Ruysbroeck (1293–1381) Flemish mystic

From Evelyn Underhill Ruysbroeck (1915), p171
The Sparkling Stone (c. 1340)

Love , Life , Death , God

“Liberty once again must become more important to us than the desire for security and material comfort. Personal safety and economic prosperity can only come as the consequence of liberty. They cannot be provided by an authoritarian government… The foundation for a police state has been put in place, and it's urgent we mobilize resistance before it's too late… Central planning is intellectually bankrupt – and it has bankrupted our country and undermined our moral principles. Respect for individual liberty and dignity is the only answer to government force, force that serves the politically and economically powerful. Our planners and rulers are not geniuses, but rather demagogues and would-be dictators -- always performing their tasks with a cover of humanitarian rhetoric… The collapse of the Soviet system came swiftly and dramatically, without a bloody conflict… It came as no surprise, however, to the devotees of freedom who have understood for decades that socialism was doomed to fail… And so too will the welfare/warfare state fail… A free society is based on the key principle that the government, the president, the Congress, the courts, and the bureaucrats are incapable of knowing what is best for each and every one of us… A government as a referee is proper, but a government that uses arbitrary force to direct every aspect of society threatens freedom… The time has come for a modern approach to achieving those values that all civilized societies seek. Only in a free society do individuals have the best chance to seek virtue, strive for excellence, improve their economic well-being, and achieve personal happiness… The worthy goals of civilization can only be achieved by freedom loving individuals. When government uses force, liberty is sacrificed and the goals are lost. It is freedom that is the source of all creative energy. If I am to be your president, these are the goals I would seek. I reject the notion that we need a president to run our lives, plan the economy, or police the world… It is much more important to protect individual liberty and privacy than to make government even more secretive and powerful.”

Ron Paul (1935) American politician and physician

Video Address Announcing 2008 Presidential Exploratory Committee, February 19, 2007 http://blog.4president.org/2008/2007/02/ron_paul_video_.html http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FPlPT4bncq8
2000s, 2006-2009

Love , Secret , World , Freedom

“Making a virtue of necessity.”

Francesco Berni (1497–1535) Italian poet

III, 86
Rifacimento of Orlando Innamorato

“Then will I set my heart to find
Inward adornings of the mind;
Knowledge and virtue, truth and grace,
These are the robes of richest dress.”

Isaac Watts (1674–1748) English hymnwriter, theologian and logician

Song 22: "Against Pride in Clothes".
1710s, Divine Songs Attempted in the Easy Language of Children (1715)

Truth , Knowledge , Heart

“It may be observed, that provinces amid the vicissitudes to which they are subject, pass from order into confusion, and afterward recur to a state of order again; for the nature of mundane affairs not allowing them to continue in an even course, when they have arrived at their greatest perfection, they soon begin to decline. In the same manner, having been reduced by disorder, and sunk to their utmost state of depression, unable to descend lower, they, of necessity, reascend; and thus from good they gradually decline to evil, and from evil again return to good. The reason is, that valor produces peace; peace, repose; repose, disorder; disorder, ruin; so from disorder order springs; from order virtue, and from this, glory and good fortune.”

Niccolo Machiavelli Florentine Histories

Book V, Chapter 1 http://www.readprint.com/chapter-7136/Niccolo-Machiavelli
Florentine Histories (1526)

Peace , Spring , Nature , Evil

“All large organizations have an internal power struggle over the goals and resources of the organization…. In the largest firms, there are two bases of control : formal ownership and authority. Those who own the firm control by virtue of ownership. Authority relations embedded in the organizational structure legitimate how managers can control organizations.”

Neil Fligstein (1951) American sociologist

Source: The transformation of corporate control, 1993, p. 10 ; As cited in: François L'Italien, BÉHÉMOTH CAPITAL. Contribution à une théorie dialectique de la financiarisation de la grande corporation. Université Laval, 2012. p. 147 (Many of the following quotes came from this source)

“Is this kind of ethics individualistic or not? Yes, if one means by that that it accords to the individual an absolute value and that it recognizes in him alone the power of laying the foundations of his own existence. It is individualism in the sense in which the wisdom of the ancients, the Christian ethics of salvation, and the Kantian ideal of virtue also merit this name; it is opposed to the totalitarian doctrines which raise up beyond man the mirage of Mankind. But it is not solipsistic, since the individual is defined only by his relationship to the world and to other individuals; he exists only by transcending himself, and his freedom can be achieved only through the freedom of others. He justifies his existence by a movement which, like freedom, springs from his heart but which leads outside of him.
This individualism does not lead to the anarchy of personal whim. Man is free; but he finds his law in his very freedom. First, he must assume his freedom and not flee it by a constructive movement: one does not exist without doing something; and also by a negative movement which rejects oppression for oneself and others.”

Simone de Beauvoir book The Ethics of Ambiguity

Une telle morale [la morale existentialiste] est-elle ou non un individualisme? Oui, si l’on entend par là qu’elle accorde à l’individu une valeur absolue et qu’elle reconnaît qu’a lui seul le pouvoir de fonder son existence. Elle est individualisme au sens où les sagesses antiques, la morale chrétienne du salut, l’idéal de la vertu kantienne méritent aussi ce nom ; elle s’oppose aux doctrines totalitaires qui dressent par-delà I’homme le mirage de l’Humanité. Mais elle n’est pas un solipsisme, puisque l’individu ne se définit que par sa relation au monde et aux autres individus, il n’existe qu’en se transcendant et sa liberté ne peut s’accomplir qu’à travers la liberté d’autrui. Il justifie son existence par un mouvement qui, comme elle, jaillit du coeur de lui-même, mais qui aboutit hors de lui.
Cet individualisme ne conduit pas à l’anarchie du bon plaisir. L’homme est libre ; mais il trouve sa loi dans sa liberté même. D’abord il doit assumer sa liberté et non la fuir; il l’assume par un mouvement constructif : on n’existe pas sans faire; et aussi par un mouvement négatif qui refuse l’oppression pour soi et pour autrui.
Conclusion http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/ethics/de-beauvoir/ambiguity/ch04.htm
The Ethics of Ambiguity (1947)

Wisdom , World , Law , Spring

“I believe there is one Supreme most perfect being. … I believe He is pleased and delights in the happiness of those He has created; and since without virtue man can have no happiness in this world, I firmly believe He delights to see me virtuous.”

Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790) American author, printer, political theorist, politician, postmaster, scientist, inventor, civic activist, …

"Articles of Belief and Acts of Religion" (1728).
1720s

World , Perfection , Happiness

“A deed happens in a definite place at a definite time, but if it be sufficiently great and pregnant, its virtue radiates everywhere in time and space.”

George Sarton (1884–1956) American historian of science

Preface.
A History of Science Vol.2 Hellenistic Science and Culture in the Last Three Centuries B.C. (1959)

Time

“Acts of creation are ordinarily reserved for gods and poets, but humbler folk may circumvent this restriction if they know how. To plant a pine, for example, one need be neither god nor poet; one need only own a shovel. By virtue of this curious loophole in the rules, any clodhopper may say: Let there be a tree—and there will be one.”

Aldo Leopold book A Sand County Almanac

“December: Pines above the Snow”, p. 81.
A Sand County Almanac, 1949, "November: Axe-in-Hand," "November: A Mighty Fortress," and "December: Pines above the Snow"

God , Tree

“Sanity — that is the great virtue of the ancient literature; the want of that is the great defect of the modern, in spite of its variety and power.”

Matthew Arnold (1822–1888) English poet and cultural critic who worked as an inspector of schools

"Preface to Poems" (1854)

Literature

“But if he does really think that there is no distinction between virtue and vice, why, Sir, when he leaves our houses let us count our spoons.”

Samuel Johnson (1709–1784) English writer

July 14, 1763, p. 123
Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), Vol I

Thinking , Housing

“U. S. imperialism will be compelled to withdraw its troops, and to allow the people of Vietnam to settle their national affairs as they wish. Victory for the heroic people of Vietnam in their unwavering struggle to maintain their national independence will mark the end of the era during which great imperialist states were able to impose their will upon weaker peoples by brute force of arms. By virtue of that fact and the character of our epoch, it will open the floodgates for a great and widespread democratic advance all over the world.”

Tim Buck (1891–1973) Canadian politician

Lenin and Canada

People , World , Victory

“Discard all traditional standards. Leave them to the hypocrites. Only what liberates you from desire and fear and wrong ideas is good. As long as you worry about sin and virtue you will have no peace. (…)”

Nisargadatta Maharaj (1897–1981) Indian guru

Liberation
Source: "I am That." P.71

Fear , Peace , Idea

“Human virtue, if we went down to the roots of it, is not so rare. The materials of human virtue are everywhere abundant as the light of the sun: raw materials,—O woe, and loss, and scandal thrice and threefold, that they so seldom are elaborated, and built into a result! that they lie yet unelaborated, and stagnant in the souls of wide-spread dreary millions, fermenting, festering; and issue at last as energetic vice instead of strong practical virtue!”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

1850s, Latter-Day Pamphlets (1850), Model Prisons (March 1, 1850)

Lie , Soul , Light , Strong

“The strangest, most generous, and proudest of all virtues is true courage.”

Michel De Montaigne (1533–1592) (1533-1592) French-Occitan author, humanistic philosopher, statesman

Attributed

Courageous , Courage

“Whatever its imagined virtues, faith is the enemy of open and honest inquiry. Remaining open to the powers of conversation - to new evidence and better arguments - is not only essential for rationality. It is essential for love.”

Sam Harris (1967) American author, philosopher and neuroscientist

2010s, Lying (2011)

Love , Faith , Imagination

“In every country the intellectual class is the most influential class. This is the class which can foresee, advise and lead. In no country does the mass of the people live the life for intelligent thought and action. It is largely imitative and follows the intellectual class. There is no exaggeration in saying that the entire destination of the country depends upon its intellectual class. If the intellectual class is honest and independent, it can be trusted to take the initiative and give a proper lead when a crisis arises. It is true that the intellect by itself is no virtue. It is only a means and the use of a means depends upon the ends which an intellectual person pursues. An intellectual man can be a good man but he may easily be a rogue. Similarly an intellectual class may be a band of high-souled persons, ready to help, ready to emancipate erring humanity or it may easily be a gang of crooks or a body of advocates of narrow clique from which it draws its support.”

Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar (1891–1956) Father of republic India, champion of human rights, father of India's Constitution, polymath, revolutionary…

Speech delivered to the Bombay Presidency Mahar Conference (31 May 1936) http://www.columbia.edu/itc/mealac/pritchett/00ambedkar/txt_ambedkar_salvation.html

Life , People , Soul , Intelligence

“One good Man may take another's Word, if they so agree, but a whole Nation ought never to trust to any Honesty, but what is built upon Necessity; for unhappy is the People, and their Constitution will be ever precarious, whose Welfare must depend upon the Virtues and Consciences of Ministers and Politicians.”

Bernard Mandeville book The Fable of the Bees

Remark Q, pp. 207-8
The Fable of the Bees (1714)

People , Dependency

“It was dangerous to have a sadist in the barracks, especially one who justified his excesses by religiously invoking the sacrosanct authority of the plebe system. The system contained its own high quotient of natural cruelty, and there was a very thin line between devotion to duty, that is, being serious about the plebe system, which was an exemplary virtue in the barracks, and genuine sadism, which was not. But I had noticed that in the actual hierarchy of values at the Institute, the sadist like Snipes rated higher than someone who took no interest in the freshmen and entertained no belief in the system at all. In the Law of the Corps it was better to carry your beliefs to an extreme than to be faithless. For the majority of the Corps, the only sin of the sadist was that he believed in the system too passionately and applied his belief with an overabundant zeal. Because of this, the barracks at all times provided a safe regency for the sadist and almost all of them earned rank. My sin was harder to figure. I did not participate at all in the rituals of the plebe system. Cruelty was easier to forgive than apostasy.”

Pat Conroy The Lords of Discipline

Source: The Lords of Discipline (1980), p. 96

Law , Forgiveness , Nature , Passion

“No, they were not exactly automatons, but they did not know what they were doing. They take down a boy’s britches. They stare at his buttocks. They cane him until the buttocks bleed. And they believe this is virtue, because it is done in a school, and it becomes vice only if it is done in a place with a red lantern over the door.”

Robert Anton Wilson (1932–2007) American author and polymath

The Widow's Son

School , Boy

“Possibly worst of all, from the standpoint of the dedicated enemies of freedom, the Internet is a world that libertarians — having been marginalized for three decades by the establishment media — have made their own, almost without effort. It's an alternative reality (unlike 'meat-space' we live in) in which — exactly like intelligence, bravery, or virtue — the human capacity for violence is not additive, and in which it's impossible to initiate force against anybody.”

L. Neil Smith (1946) American writer

"Keep Your Filthy Hands Off The Internet" 20 June 2010.

World , Intelligence , Reality , Effort

“Respect for his ancestors excites, in the breast of man, interest in their history, attachment to their characters, concern for their errors, involuntary pride in their virtues. Love for his posterity spurs him to exertion for their support, stimulates him to virtue for their example, and fills him with the tenderest solicitude for their welfare. Man, therefore, was not made for himself alone. No; he was made for his country, by the obligations of the social compact: he was made for his species, by the Christian duties of universal charity: he was made for all ages past, by the sentiment of reverence for his forefathers; and he was made for all future times, by the impulse of affection for his progeny. Under the influence of these principles, "Existence sees him spurn her bounded reign." They redeem his nature from the subjection of time and space: he is no longer a "puny insect shivering at a breeze;" he is the glory of creation, formed to occupy all time and all extent: bounded, during his residence upon earth, only by the boundaries of the world, and destined to life and immortality in brighter regions, when the fabric of nature itself shall dissolve and perish.”

John Quincy Adams (1767–1848) American politician, 6th president of the United States (in office from 1825 to 1829)

He here quotes statements made about William Shakespeare by Samuel Johnson, and then one made in reference to Timon by Alexander Pope in Moral Essays.
Oration at Plymouth (1802)

Love , Life , Age , World

“Disobedience, the rarest and most courageous of the virtues, is seldom distinguished from neglect, the laziest and commonest of the vices.”

George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish playwright

#89
1900s, Maxims for Revolutionists (1903)

Courage

“Till women are more rationally educated, the progress in human virtue and improvement in knowledge must receive continual checks.”

Mary Wollstonecraft book A Vindication of the Rights of Woman

Source: A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), Ch. 3

Women , Education , Knowledge

“An elegant sufficiency, content,
Retirement, rural quiet, friendship, books,
Ease and alternate labour, useful life,
Progressive virtue, and approving Heaven!”

James Thomson (poet) The Seasons

Source: The Seasons (1726-1730), Spring (1728), l. 1158-1161.

Life , Friendship , Books

“A difficult form of virtue is to try in your own life to obey what you believe to be God's will.”

John Coleridge, 1st Baron Coleridge (1820–1894) British lawyer, judge and Liberal politician

1 Cababe & Ellis' Q. B. D. Rep. 145.
Reg. v. Ramsey (1883)

Life , God

“Exceeding fair she was not; and yet fair
In that she never studied to be fairer
Than Nature made her; beauty cost her nothing,
Her virtues were so rare.”

George Chapman All Fools

Act I, scene i.
All Fools (1605)

Beauty , Nature , Study

“I agree with you likewise in your wishes to keep religion and government independent of each Other. Were it possible for St. Paul to rise from his grave at the present juncture, he would say to the Clergy who are now so active in settling the political Affairs of the World. “Cease from your political labors your kingdom is not of this World. Read my Epistles. In no part of them will you perceive me aiming to depose a pagan Emperor, or to place a Christian upon a throne. Christianity disdains to receive Support from human Governments. From this, it derives its preeminence over all the religions that ever have, or ever Shall exist in the World. Human Governments may receive Support from Christianity but it must be only from the love of justice, and peace which it is calculated to produce in the minds of men. By promoting these, and all the Other Christian Virtues by your precepts, and example, you will much sooner overthrow errors of all kind, and establish our pure and holy religion in the World, than by aiming to produce by your preaching, or pamphlets any change in the political state of mankind.””

Benjamin Rush (1745–1813) American physician, educator, author

Letter to Thomas Jefferson, 6 October 1800 http://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/01-32-02-0120,” Founders Online, National Archives. Source: The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, vol. 32, ed. Barbara B. Oberg. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005, pp. 204–207

Love , Men , World , Peace

“Sincerity and truth form the basis of every virtue.
Be what thou seemest; live thy creed;
Hold up to earth the torch divine;
Be what thou prayest to be made;
Let the great Master's steps be thine.”

Horatius Bonar (1808–1889) British minister and poet

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 553.

Truth , Sincerity

“At court, far from regarding ambition as a sin, people regard it as a virtue, or if it passes for a vice, then it is regarded as the vice of great souls, and the vices of great souls are preferred to the virtues of the simple and the small.”

Louis Bourdaloue (1632–1704) French serman writer

as quoted in The Bourgeois: Catholicism vs. Capitalism in Eighteenth-Century France (1927), p. 137

People , Soul

“If Virtue & Knowledge are diffus'd among the People, they will never be enslav'd. This will be their great Security.”

Samuel Adams (1722–1803) American statesman, Massachusetts governor, and political philosopher

Letter to James Warren (12 February 1779)

People , Knowledge

“The business of saying, in advance of a serious effort, that people are not capable of achieving a good education is too strongly reminiscent of the opposition of every extension of democracy. This opposition has always rested on the allegation that the people were incapable of exercising the power they demanded. Always the historic statement has been verified: you cannot expect the slave to show the virtues of the free man unless you first set him free. When the slave has been set free, he has, in the passage of time, become indistinguishable from those who have always been free.”

Robert Maynard Hutchins (1899–1977) philosopher and university president

Great Books: The Foundation of a Liberal Education (1954)

People , Education , Exercises , Democracy

“I saw verily that the inward part is master and sovereign to the outward, and doth not charge itself with, nor take heed to, the will of that: but all the intent and will is set to be oned unto our Lord Jesus. That the outward part should draw the inward to assent was not shewed to me; but that the inward draweth the outward by grace, and both shall be oned in bliss without end, by the virtue of Christ, — this was shewed.”

Julian of Norwich (1342–1416) English theologian and anchoress

The Eighth Revelation, Chapter 19

Christ , Parting , Drawing

“It is the safest to be moderately base — to be flexible in shame, and to be always ready for what is generous, good, and just, when anything is to be gained by virtue.”

Sydney Smith (1771–1845) English writer and clergyman

"Catholics", published in The Edinburgh Review (1827)

“To show that there are natural processes that produce religious belief does nothing, so far, to discredit it; perhaps God designed us in such a way that it is by virtue of those processes that we come to have knowledge of him.”

Alvin Plantinga book Warranted Christian Belief

[2000, Warranted Christian Belief, 9780195131925, 145, http://www.ccel.org/ccel/plantinga/warrant3.v.iii.i.iv.html]

God , Way , Nature , Knowledge

“The first is that he must be well-ordered from without in all virtues and unhindered within, just as empty of all outward works as though he were not working. For if he is busy within by any work of virtue, then he is assailed by images. As long as that is going on in him, he cannot contemplate.”

John Ruysbroeck (1293–1381) Flemish mystic

The Spiritual Espousals (c. 1340)

Business

“There is not a negro from the coast of Africa who does not, in this respect, possess a degree of magnanimity which the soul of his sordid master is too often scarce capable of conceiving. Fortune never exerted more cruelly her empire over mankind, than when she subjected those nations of heroes to the refuse of the jails of Europe, to wretches who possess the virtues neither of the countries which they come from, nor of those which they go to, and whose levity, brutality, and baseness, so justly expose them to the contempt of the vanquished.”

Adam Smith book The Theory of Moral Sentiments

Chap. II.
The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759), Part V

Soul , Country

“The sinners would have included those who did not pay their tithes (one tenth of their income) to the priests, and those who were negligent about the sabbath rest and about ritual cleanliness. The laws and customs on these matters were so complicated that the uneducated were quite incapable of understanding what was expected of them. Education in those days was a matter of knowing.. the law and all its ramifications. The illiterate and uneducated were inevitably lawless and immoral. The ‘am ha-arez, or uneducated peasants, ‘the rabble who know nothing of the law’ (John 7:49) were regarded by even the most enlightened Pharisees, like Hillel, as incapable of virtue and piety.”

Albert Nolan (1934) South African priest and activist

Source: Jesus Before Christianity: The Gospel of Liberation (1976), p. 23.

Education , Law , Understanding

“[Boucher admits that the use of slavery in the British colonies is better regulated than in other countries, but notes that:] "it is surely worse in this, that here, in one sense, it never can end. An African slave, even when made free, supposing him to be possessed even of talents and of virtue, can never, in these colonies, be quite on terms of equality with a free white man."”

Jonathan Boucher (1738–1804) English minister

"A View of the Causes and Consequences of the American Revolution" (London, Robinson, 1797)

Sense , Country

“Regional Banks that are constrained to lend within a particular area are a necessary part of the institutional ecology in that they resist the centralising power of capital, allow a more stable access to credit for regional and smaller businesses and encourage relationships and reciprocity to constrain the demand for higher rates of return that have decimated the mutual bank sector in Britain. They also offer an alternative to usurious lending, one of the great growth areas in our economy. Any serious reflection on ‘employment policies’ must confront the centralisation of capital and the state and seek to constrain both through the endowment of decentralised regional and sectoral institutions that constrain centralisation and preserve and renew traditions of virtue within the economy through resisting the commodification of human beings, nature and knowledge demanded by the maximum return on investment. It allows initiative and enterprise to be oriented towards the future.”

Maurice Glasman, Baron Glasman (1961) British philosopher

The Politics of Employment, 23 May 2013 http://togetherforthecommongood.co.uk/viewpoints/opinion-pieces/articles/maurice-glasman.html

Business , Nature , Knowledge , Future

“Lower forms merge into higher forms, one species with another, the vegetable into the animal kingdom; in human history one epoch slides into another…Socialism, the stage which follows Liberalism, retains everything of value in Liberalism by virtue of its being the hereditary heir of Liberalism.”

Ramsay MacDonald (1866–1937) British statesman; prime minister of the United Kingdom

Socialism and Society (1905), pp. 164-165
1900s

History , Animals

“They that endeavour to abolish vice destroy also virtue, for contraries, though they destroy one another, are yet the life of one another.”

Thomas Browne book Religio Medici

Section 4
Religio Medici (1643), Part II

Life

“It must be very painful to a man of Lord Hugh Cecil's natural benevolence and human charity to find so many of God's children wandering simultaneously so far astray … In these circumstances I would venture to suggest to my noble friend, whose gifts and virtues I have all my life admired, that some further refinement is needed in the catholicity of his condemnations.”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Letter to The Times on 12 May 1936, responding to Lord Cecil equally denouncing Italy, France, Japan, the USSR, and Germany; Churchill said that the French did not deserve as much criticism as the others. Quoted by John Gunther in Inside Europe (1940), p. 329.
The 1930s

Life , God , Pain , Children

“Faith is a vice pretending to be a virtue, its lies and errors and frothy nonsense deluding us and distracting us from action. There's no salvation in wishful thinking, only inertia. Faith is the enemy of reason. The one thing every single one of us here must be united in despising is faith. It's the barren refuge of the vacuous, the fearful, the frauds, and the obstacles to accomplishment.”

PZ Myers (1957) American scientist and associate professor of biology

Reason Rally speech, National Mall, Washington, DC,

Fear , Faith , Error , Fraud

“No one can be happy without virtue.”
Beatus autem esse sine virtute nemo potest

Marcus Tullius Cicero (-106–-43 BC) Roman philosopher and statesman

Book I, section 48
De Natura Deorum – On the Nature of the Gods (45 BC)

Happiness

Quotes about virtue page 8

Quotes about virtue
page 8