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:
“An ideal is merely the projection, on an enormously enlarged scale, of some aspect of personality.”
—Aldous Huxley (1894–1963)
“The hour when you say, “What does my virtue matter? It has not yet made me rage. How tired I am of my good and my evil! All that is poverty and filth, and a wretched complacency!””
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)