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.
To be a Christian is a standing, a legal position. It means to be a child of God. You are or you are not, there is no try.
Civil officials have no business meddling in private religious affairs.
And of the Witch? In the life of a Witch, there is no "after", in the "ever after" of a Witch there is no "happily"; in the story of a Witch, there is no afterword. Of that part that is beyond the life story, beyond the story of the life, there is-alas, or perhaps thank mercy-no telling. She was dead, dead, and gone, and all that was left of her was the carapace of her reputation for malice.
Strike the dog dead, it's but a critic!
... A CLOCKWORK ORANGE- and I said: 'That's a fair gloopy title. Who ever heard of a clockwork orange?' Then I read a malenky bit out loud in a sort of very high type preaching goloss: '- The attempt to impose upon a man, a creature of growth and capable of sweetness, to ooze juicily at the last round the bearded lips of God, to attempt to impose, I say, laws and conditions appropriate to a mechanical creation, against this I raise my swordpen-
The world is all alike. Those that seem better than their neighbours are only more artful. They mean the same thing, though they take a different road.
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