It takes a vice to check a vice, and virtue is the by-product of a stalemate between opposite vices.
Interpretation
The quote suggests that opposing forces can highlight each other's nature, resulting in a balance that fosters virtue.
In this quote, Eric Hoffer reflects on the idea that vices can serve as a necessary counterbalance to one another, implying that no singular virtue can exist without the presence of its opposing vice. This stalemate between conflicting moralities or behaviors creates an environment in which virtue can emerge, underscoring the complexity of human nature and the moral landscape we navigate.
In practice
This quote could be used in a debate about morality in a philosophy class.
Language was invented to ask questions. Answers may be given by grunts and gestures, but questions must be spoken. Humanness came of age when man asked the first question. Social stagnation results not from a lack of answers but from the absence of the impulse to ask questions.
Faith in humanity, in posterity, in the destiny of one's religion, nation, race, party or family-what is it but the visualization of that eternal something to which we attach the self that is about to be annihilated?
You can discover what your enemy fears most by observing the means he uses to frighten you.
Our frustration is greater when we have much and want more than when we have nothing and want some. We are less dissatisfied when we lack many things than when we seem to lack but one thing.
Our credulity is greatest concerning the things we know least about.
Perhaps a modern society can remain stable only by eliminating adolescence, by giving its young, from the age of ten, the skills, responsibilities, and rewards of grownups, and opportunities for action in all spheres of life. Adolescence should be a time of useful action, while book learning and scholarship should be a preoccupation of adults.
People do not seem to realize that their opinion of the world is also a confession of character.
Is it not the excess and greed of this and the neglect of all other things that revolutionizes this constitution too and prepares the way for the necessity of a dictatorship?
If Ireland is to become a new Ireland she must first become European.
I am not afraid of death. I just don't want to be there when it happens.
You see, there's the way things seemed and then there's the way things were and one is so often the total reverse of the other.
I was pretending that I did not speak their language; on the moon we spoke a soft, liquid tongue, and sang in the starlight, looking down on the dead dried world.
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