Right Thing, Right Now

He once quoted the poet Horace from memory: “The man who is just and firm of purpose can be shaken from his stern resolve neither by the rage of the people who urge him to crime nor by the countenance of the threatening tyrant.”

“Justice means much more than the sort of thing that goes on in law courts,” C. S. Lewis would remind listeners in a famous lecture series. “It is the old name for everything we should now call ‘fairness’; it includes honesty, give and take, truthfulness, keeping promises, and all that side of life.”

Until we stop debating, we can’t start doing. We keep debating so we don’t have to start doing. JUSTICE

“The phrase ‘I am not responsible’ has become a standard response in our society to complaints of a job poorly done,” Admiral Rickover once pointed out. “This response is a semantic error. Generally what a person means is, ‘I cannot be held legally liable.’ Yet, from a moral or ethical point of view the person who declaims responsibility is correct

Pragmatism without virtue is dangerous and hollow. Virtue without pragmatism is ineffectual and impotent.

“Silence in the face of evil is itself evil,” Dietrich Bonhoeffer said from inside Hitler’s Germany. “God will not hold us guiltless. Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act.”

Charles de Gaulle explained that it wasn’t just raw courage that was required to lead, but that a statesman “must know when to dissemble, when to be frank…. Every man of action has a strong dose of egotism, pride, hardness and cunning. But all those things will be forgiven of him—indeed they will be regarded as high qualities—if he can make them th

Virtue is something we do. It’s something we choose. Not once, for Hercules’s crossroads was not a singular event. It’s a daily challenge, one we face not once but constantly, repeatedly. Will we be selfish or selfless? Brave or afraid? Strong or weak? Wise or stupid? Will we cultivate a good habit or a bad one? Courage or cowardice? The bliss of i

No one throws you a parade when you do the right thing. Karma, as much as we’d like for it to be true, has a funny way of not coming around.