The most worthless of mankind are not afraid to condemn in others the same disorders which they allow in themselves; and can readily discover some nice difference in age, character, or station, to justify the partial distinction.
Interpretation
The quote addresses hypocrisy in human behavior, where people criticize others for faults they themselves possess.
Edward Gibbon's quote highlights the hypocrisy prevalent in human nature, where individuals are quick to condemn others for flaws or shortcomings that they themselves exhibit but choose to overlook. This selective judgment often hinges on arbitrary distinctions such as age or social status, allowing the individual to maintain a moral high ground while still engaging in the same behaviors they decry in others. The quote serves as a reminder of the need for self-awareness and consistency in our moral judgments.
In practice
In a discussion about ethics, this quote can be referenced to illustrate the concept of hypocrisy among critics.
It was Rome, on the fifteenth of October, 1764, as I sat musing amidst the ruins of the Capitol, while the barefooted friars were singing vespers in the Temple of Jupiter, that the idea of writing the decline and fall of the city first started to my mind.
I will not dissemble the first emotions of joy on the recovery of my freedom, and, perhaps, the establishment of my fame. But my pride was soon humbled, and a sober melancholy was spread over my mind, by the idea that I had taken an everlasting leave of an old and agreeable companion, and that whatsoever might be the future date of my History, the life of the historian must be short and precarious.
And the winds and the waves are always on the side of the ablest navigators.
The first and indispensable requisite of happiness is a clear conscience.
In discussing Barbarism and Christianity I have actually been discussing the Fall of Rome.
Many a sober Christian would rather admit that a wafer is God than that God is a cruel and capricious tyrant.
You don't have to teach people how to be human. You have to teach them how to stop being inhuman.
I believe in God, which means I am open to some absurd possibilities. But I understand the power of that faith, and I understand the metaphor of that belief.
Indian religion has always felt that since the minds, the temperaments and the intellectual affinities of men are unlimited in their variety, a perfect liberty of thought and of worship must be allowed to the individual in his approach to the Infinite.
Any man's life, told truly, is a novel.
We who live in quiet places have the opportunity to become acquainted with ourselves, to think our own thoughts and live our own lives in a way that is not possible for those keeping up with the crowd.
They don't understand what it is to be awake, / To be living on several planes at once / Though one cannot speak with several voices at once.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.