Sepulveda argued that "the Spaniards rule with perfect right over the barbarians who, in prudence, talent, virtue, humanity are as inferior to the Spaniards as children to adults, women to men, the savage and cruel to the mild and gentle, I might say as monkey to men".
Beauty, Grace, Figure, Attitude, Movement, have in innumerable Instances prevailed over Wealth, Birth, Talents Virtues and every thing else, in Men of the highest rank, greatest Power, and sometimes, the most exalted Genius, greatest Fame, and highest Merit.
The founders voted to name the school after General Lafayette, who famously toured the country in 1824 25, as "a testimony of respect for [his] talents, virtues, and signal services... in the great cause of freedom".
Thomas Jefferson said the goal of American education is to nurture the "natural aristocracy of talent and virtue".
In his long career, Galton didn't come close to proving the central axiom of eugenics: that, when it comes to talent and virtue, nature dominates nurture.
With "& Sons," David Gilbert — the author of a novel, "The Normals," and a short-story collection, "Remote Feed" — has set out to write a big, ambitious book about fathers and sons, Oedipal envy and sibling rivalry, and the dynamics between art and life, talent and virtue.
After the ratification of the U.S. Constitution and the creation of the federal republic in 1789, however, a new ethos of nation-making took hold in which ambition, properly cultivated, could rescue talent and virtue from the parochial needs of the family farm.
Without courage, without talent, without virtue".
And it had a guiding elite, supposedly only "an aristocracy of talent and virtue," as Thomas Jefferson put it, and not one of blood and ill-gotten wealth.
The most talented and virtuous, he assumed, would naturally strive to exercise fully their talents and virtue through politics and science.
Still, it is difficult to show that a society has a moral claim on its members' labor, talents, or virtue that compels its members to contribute to societal well-being no matter what.
