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:
“One who does not know how to discover the pathway to his ideal lives more frivolously and impudently than the man without an ideal.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“O, he sits high in all the people’s hearts;
And that which would appear offence in us
His countenance, like richest alchemy,
Will change to virtue and to worthiness.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)