Quotes About Virtue

Capitalism is based on self-interest and self-esteem; it holds integrity and trustworthiness as cardinal virtues and makes them pay off in the marketplace, thus demanding that men survive by means of virtue, not vices. It is this superlatively moral system that the welfare statists propose to improve upon by means of preventative law, snooping bureaucrats, and the chronic goad of fear.

THERE ARE FOUR TYPES of temperaments. One who is easily angered and easily appeased—his virtue cancels his flaw. One whom it is difficult to anger and difficult to appease—his flaw cancels his virtue. One whom it is difficult to anger and is easily appeased, is pious. One who is easily angered and is difficult to appease, is wicked. —PIRKEI AVOT 5:11

Occupy a rightful space, neither too much nor too little. Focus neither on your own virtues nor the faults of others.

I have even heard holiness defined as the absence of self-interest.

in so many areas of life, Nature had made it agreeable for man to do what was virtuous.

I suggested we name one of the children Silence," said Dion, "a greatly underrated virtue.

A good man often appears gauche simply because he does not take advantage of the myriad mean little chances of making himself look stylish. Preferring truth to form, he is not constantly at work upon the facade of his appearance.

It is only by participation in a rational, practice-based community that one becomes rational.

We) are never able to seek for the good or exercise the virtues only qua individual ... we all approach our own circumstances as bearers of a particular social identity. I am someone's son or daughter, a citizen of this or that city. I belong to this clan, that tribe, this nation. ... I inherit from the past of my family, my city, my tribe, my nation, a variety of debts, inheritances, expectations and obligations.

At least some of the items in a Homeric list of the aretai would clearly not be counted by most of us nowadays as virtues at all, physical strength being the most obvious example.

There is no practical rationality then without the virtues of character. The vicious argue unsoundly from false premises about the good, while the akratic ignores the sound arguments available to him. Only the virtuous are able to argue soundly to those conclusions which are their actions […]

Plato in both the Gorgias and the Republic looked back to Socrates and asserted that "it is better to suffer tortures on the rack than to have a soul burdened with the guilt of doing evil." Aristotle does not confront this position directly: he merely emphasizes that it is better still both to be free from having done evil and to be free from being tortured on the rack.

That she had loved Sylveste because he was such a self-important bastard and made something noble of being a self-important bastard, did it with such utter aplomb that it became a kind of virtue, like the wearing of sackcloth

A magnetic personality doesn't necessarily indicate a good heart.

Character may almost be called the most effective means of persuasion.

If you see a philosopher determining all things by means of right reason, him you shall reverence: he is a heavenly being and not of this earth.

My basic philosophy is that no human being is a saint.

Once you get rid of integrity the rest is a piece of cake.

Greed has increasingly become a virtue among Wall Street bankers and corporate CEOs in the U.S. Nowhere else in the world do CEOs insist on receiving compensation as high compared to what their employees earn.

The walls of that grand edifice called a good character have to be worked at during life.

When you do something moral and upright and wander off by yourself, well, everyone doesn't always follow you, do they, right? You pat yourself on your sanctimonious back but it doesn't mean the crowd rewards you for doing what you think is right.

Terror is only justice: prompt, severe and inflexible; it is then an emanation of virtue; it is less a distinct principle than a natural consequence of the general principle of democracy, applied to the most pressing wants of the country.

The life of a good man is a continual warfare with his passions.

Every vice was once a virtue, and may become respectable again, just as hatred becomes respectable in wartime.