"Virtue is defined to be mediocrity, of which either extreme is vice"
About this Quote
Hayes is smuggling a warning into what sounds like a civics-class platitude: the center is not just safe, it is morally correct. By defining virtue as "mediocrity", he doesn’t mean dullness as a personal failing; he means moderation as a governing ethic. The line reframes political temperance as righteousness, and it does so with a prosecutor’s trick: it labels "either extreme" as "vice", turning intensity itself into a suspect motive.
That rhetorical move matters in Hayes’s context. He takes office in the wreckage of Reconstruction, amid disputed legitimacy, partisan fury, and a national appetite for "settlement" over justice. A president who wants to cool the room has every incentive to sanctify the middle. Moderation becomes an alibi for stability, and stability becomes the moral high ground. The quote’s subtext is not just about personal character; it’s about what kinds of demands the state will treat as respectable. Ask for too much, too fast - from either side - and you get classed as a moral problem, not a political actor.
The sentence also reveals the slipperiness of "virtue" when a leader defines it. Calling virtue "mediocrity" flatters the median voter and disciplines dissent. It reassures people tired of conflict that their fatigue is ethical. But it quietly downgrades moral urgency: if the extremes are always vice, then some injustices are never allowed to feel intolerable. Hayes is advocating a politics of calm, and admitting, almost accidentally, the cost of that calm.
That rhetorical move matters in Hayes’s context. He takes office in the wreckage of Reconstruction, amid disputed legitimacy, partisan fury, and a national appetite for "settlement" over justice. A president who wants to cool the room has every incentive to sanctify the middle. Moderation becomes an alibi for stability, and stability becomes the moral high ground. The quote’s subtext is not just about personal character; it’s about what kinds of demands the state will treat as respectable. Ask for too much, too fast - from either side - and you get classed as a moral problem, not a political actor.
The sentence also reveals the slipperiness of "virtue" when a leader defines it. Calling virtue "mediocrity" flatters the median voter and disciplines dissent. It reassures people tired of conflict that their fatigue is ethical. But it quietly downgrades moral urgency: if the extremes are always vice, then some injustices are never allowed to feel intolerable. Hayes is advocating a politics of calm, and admitting, almost accidentally, the cost of that calm.
Quote Details
| Topic | Ethics & Morality |
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