Ideal and Virtue
Given the complexity of putting ideals into practice, and resolving conflicts between them, it is not uncommon to see them reduced to dogma. One way to avoid this, according to Bernard Crick, is to have ideals that themselves are descriptive of a process, rather than an outcome. His political virtues try to raise the practical habits useful in resolving disputes into ideals of their own. A virtue, in general, is an ideal that one can make a habit.
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Famous quotes containing the words ideal and/or virtue:
“We have reason to be grateful for celestial phenomena, for they chiefly answer to the ideal in man.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“For it is not possible to join serpentine wisdom with columbine innocency, except men know exactly all the conditions of the serpent: his baseness and going upon his belly, his volubility and lubricity, his envy and sting, and the rest; that is, all forms and natures of evil: for without this, virtue lieth open and unfenced.”
—Francis Bacon (1561–1626)