Moral Virtues Quotes - Page 3

• Complaisance, though in itself it be scarce reckoned in the number of moral virtues, is that which gives a lustre to every talent a man can be possessed of. It was Plato's advice to an unpolished writer that he should sacrifice to the graces. In the same manner I would advise every man of learning, who would not appear in the world a mere scholar or philosopher, to make himself master of the social virtue which I have here mentioned.

  Joseph Addison

  Plato, Sacrifice, Men

  Sir Richard Steele, Joseph Addison (1829). “The Tatler and the Guardian: Complete in One Volume, with Notes, and a General Index”

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• The only moral virtue of war is that it compels the capitalist system to look itself in the face and admit it is a fraud. It compels the present society to admit that it has no morals it will not sacrifice for gain.

  Helen Keller

  War, Sacrifice, Faces

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• Reason is not the sole basis of moral virtue in man. His social impulses are more deeply rooted than his rational life.

  Reinhold Niebuhr

  Men, Moral, Virtue

  Reinhold Niebuhr (2013). “Moral Man and Immoral Society: A Study in Ethics and Politics”, p.26, Westminster John Knox Press

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• Let Christ turn your natural optimism into Christian hope, your energy into moral virtue, your good will into genuine self-sacrificin g love! This is the path you are called to take. This is the path to overcoming all that threatens hope, virtue and love in your lives and in your culture. In this way your youth will be a gift to Jesus and to the world.

  Pope Francis

  Christian, Jesus, Self

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• The amount of electricity that has been saved in spite of Vice President Cheney saying that efficiency is only a moral virtue ... and that you need increased supply like ANWR-is two ANWRs worth of energy.

  Stephen Schneider

  Two, President, Anwr

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• Charles Darwin, who had witnessed the
  atrocities perpetrated against Argentina’s native
  Indians by Juan Manuel de Rosas, had predicted
  that “the country will be in the hands of white
  Gaucho savages instead of copper-coloured Indians.
  The former being a little superior in education,
  as they are inferior in every moral virtue.

  Jon Lee Anderson

  Country, Hands, White

  Jon Lee Anderson (2010). “Che Guevara: A Revolutionary Life”, p.6, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

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• Kant's description of most ethical duties reads more like a description of moral virtues and vices. Once we see this, we see that Kantian ethics is indeed a kind of virtue ethics, and that it does not "divide the heart from the head" (to anticipate one of your later questions) but instead recognizes the deep truth that reason and emotion are not opposites.

  Allen W. Wood

  Heart, Reason And Emotion, Opposites

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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• There is a moral virtue, a moral fidelity, ability and honesty, which other men, besides church members, are, by good nature and education, by good laws and good examples nourished and trained up in; so that civil places and trust and credit need not be monopolized into the hands of church members (who sometimes are not fitted for public office), while all others are deprived and despoiled of their natural and civil rights and liberties.

  Roger Williams

  Honesty, Men, Hands

  Source: www.libertymagazine.org

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• A comprehensive doctrine, either religious or secular, aspires to cover all of life. I mean, if it's a religious doctrine, it talks about our relation to God and the universe; it has an ordering of all the virtues, not only political virtues but moral virtues as well, including the virtues of private life, and the rest. Now we may feel philosophically that it doesn't really cover everything, but it aims to cover everything, and a secular doctrine does also.

  John Rawls

  Religious, Mean, Political

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• You cannot have Liberty in this world without what you call Moral Virtue, and you cannot have Moral Virtue without the slavery of that half of the human race who hate what you call Moral Virtue.

  William Blake

  Hate, Artist, Race

  William Blake (1966). “Complete Writings: With Variant Readings”, p.616, Oxford University Press, USA

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• 

  Perfection of moral virtue does not wholly take away the passions, but regulates them.

  Thomas Aquinas

  Powerful, Passion, Perfection

  St Thomas Aquinas (2013). “Summa Theologica, Volume 1”, p.484, Cosimo, Inc.

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• There is a yearning for people to return to elementary moral virtues, such as integrity and commitment. We distrust people who have no centering of values. We greatly respect businessmen, for example, if they display those virtues, even if we don't necessarily agree with the people.

  Geoff Mulgan

  Integrity, Commitment, People

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• The moral virtues, then, are produced in us neither by nature nor against nature. Nature, indeed, prepares in us the ground for their reception, but their complete formation is the product of habit.

  Aristotle

  Life, Nature, Preparation

  Aristotle (1953). “Ethics: The Nicomachean Ethics”

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• [D]emocracy will soon degenerate into an anarchy, such an anarchy that every man will do what is right in his own eyes and no man's life or property or reputation or liberty will be secure, and every one of these will soon mould itself into a system of subordination of all the moral virtues and intellectual abilities, all the powers of wealth, beauty, wit and science, to the wanton pleasures, the capricious will, and the execrable cruelty of one or a very few.

  John Adams

  Eye, Men, Intellectual

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• Atheism leaves a man to sense, to philosophy, to natural piety, to laws, to reputation, all which may be guides to an outward moral virtue, though religion were not; but superstition dismounts all these, and erects an absolute monarchy in the minds of men.

  Francis Bacon

  Philosophy, Men, Order

  "Essays". Book by Francis Bacon. Chapter 17: "Of Superstition", 1625.

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• The moral virtues, without religion are but cold, lifeless, and insipid; it is only religion which opens the mind to great conceptions, fills it with the most sublime ideas, and warms the soul with more than sensual pleasures.

  Joseph Addison

  Ideas, Soul, Sublime

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• One of the most annoying habits of liberals is their tendency to confuse their political agenda with moral virtue.

  Robert Stacy McCain

  Political, Agendas, Moral

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• Just as the commander of an army pitches his camp, studies the strength and defenses of a fortress, and then attacks it on its weakest side, in like manner, the enemy of our human nature studies from all sides our theological, cardinal, and moral virtues. Wherever he finds us weakest and most in need regarding our eternal salvation, he attacks and tries to take us by storm.

  Ignatius of Loyola

  Army, Enemy, Trying

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• I see the liberty of the individual not only as a great moral good in itself (or, with Lord Acton, as the highest political good), but also as the necessary condition for the flowering of all the other goods that mankind cherishes: moral virtue, civilization, the arts and sciences, economic prosperity.

  Murray Rothbard

  Art, Civilization, Political

  Murray Newton Rothbard, Leonard P. Liggio (1975). “"Salutary neglect": the American colonies in the first half of the 18th century”, Crown

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• It is possible that the meaning of wisdom in Hebrew indicates aptitude for stratagems and the application of thought in such a way that the stratagems and ruses may be used in achieving either rational or moral virtues, or in achieving skill in a practical art, or in working evil and wickedness.

  Maimonides

  Art, Skills, Evil

  Moses Maimonides, Isadore Twersky (1972). “A Maimonides Reader”, p.353, Behrman House, Inc

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