#virtue

[I]t is the writer's duty to write fiction which promotes virtue, the good, the beautiful, and above all, the true. ... It is the writer's duty to hate injustice, to defy the powerful, and to speak for the voiceless. To be ... the severest critics of our own societies. ↗

— Edward Abbey

#duty #virtues #writers #beauty

.. is there not one true coin for which all things ought to exchange?- and that is wisdom; and only in exchange for this, and in company with this, is anything truly bought or sold, whether courage, temperance or justice. And is not all true virtue the companion of wisdom, no matter what fears or pleasures or other similar goods or evils may or may not attend her? But the virtue which is made up of these goods, when they are severed from wisdom and exchanged with one another, is a shadow of virtue only, nor is there any freedom or health or truth in her; but in the true exchange there is a purging away of all these things, and temperance, and justice, and courage, and wisdom herself, are a purgation of them. ↗

— Socrates

#socrates #virtue #wisdom #courage

for PEOPLE to rule themselves in a REPUBLIC , they must have virtue;for a TYRANT to rule in a TYRANNY ,he must use FEAR. ↗

— William J Federer

#republic #rule #tyranny #tyrant #virtue

Compassion is not a virtue -- it is a commitment. It's not something we have or don't have -- it's something we choose to practice. ↗

— Brené Brown

#compassion #virtue #courage

He thought of the virtues of courage and forbearance, which become flabby when there is nothing to use them on. ↗

— John Steinbeck

#forbearance #virtue #courage

Only the virtuous can count on life, the pursuer of evil can only ever count on death. ↗

— Travis Berketa

#death #evil #inspirational #life #murder

All of us are experts at practicing virtue at a distance. ↗

— Theodore Hesburgh

#experts #practicing #us #virtue

Ancient politicians talked incessantly about morality and virtue; our politicians talk only about business and money. One will tell you that in a particular country a man is worth the sum he could be sold for in Algiers; another, by following this calculation, will find countries where a man is worth nothing, and others where he is worth less than nothing. They assess men like herds of livestock. According to them, a man has no value to the State apart from what he consumes in it. Thus one Sybarite would have been worth at least thirty Lacedaemonians. Would someone therefore hazard a guess which of these two republics, Sparta or Sybaris, was overthrown by a handful of peasants and which one made Asia tremble? ↗

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

#money #politicians #sparta #valor #virtue

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 Wybe DIJKSTRA

#elegance #simple #simplicity #virtue #education

The man or the woman in whom resides greater virtue is the higher; neither the loftiness nor the lowliness of a person lies in the body according to the sex, but in the perfection of conduct and virtues. ↗

— Christine de Pizan

#conduct #double-standards #empowerment #equality #gender