The essence of immorality is the tendency to make an exception of myself.
Interpretation
This quote suggests that immorality arises when individuals prioritize their own needs and desires above moral standards.
Jane Addams highlights a critical aspect of immorality: the hypocrisy often displayed by individuals who believe that the rules that apply to everyone else do not apply to them. This mindset creates a double standard where personal interests override ethical considerations, leading to selfishness and a breakdown of social morals.
In practice
In a discussion on ethical leadership, one might quote Addams to emphasize the importance of accountability.
I might believe I had unusual talent if I did not know what good music was; I might enjoy half an hour's practice a day if I were busy and happy the rest of the time. You do not know what life means when all the difficulties are removed! I am simply smothered and sickened with advantages. It is like eating a sweet dessert the first thing in the morning.
America's future will be determined by the home and the school. The child becomes largely what he is taught; hence we must watch what we teach, and how we live.
Action indeed is the sole medium of expression for ethics.
I am not one of those who believe - broadly speaking - that women are better than men. We have not wrecked railroads, nor corrupted legislatures, nor done many unholy things that men have done; but then we must remember that we have not had the chance.
Nothing could be worse than the fear that one had given up too soon, and left one unexpended effort that might have saved the world.
National events determine our ideals, as much as our ideals determine national events.
This new world hath been the asylum for the persecuted lovers of civil and religious liberty from every part of Europe. Hither have they fled, not from the tender embraces of the mother, but from the cruelty of the monster; and it is so far true of England, that the same tyranny which drove the first emigrants from home, pursues their descendants still.
The mystic cords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone, all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the angels of our nature.
Nothing is so galling to a people not broken in from birth as a paternal, or, in other words, a meddling government, a government which tells them what to read, and say, and eat, and drink and wear.
A businessman cannot force you to buy his product; if he makes a mistake, he suffers the consequences; if he fails, he takes the loss. If bureaucrat makes a mistake, you suffer the consequences; if he fails, he passes the loss on to you.
No rational argument will have a rational effect on a man who does not want to adopt a rational attitude.
The glory of saving a country is not for him who has contributed to its ruin.
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