Justice: The Most Important Virtue

<p><a href='https://dailystoic.com/courage-is-the-most-important-virtue/'>Being brave</a>. <a href='https://dailystoic.com/temperance-is-the-most-important-virtue/'>Finding the right balance</a>. These are core Stoic virtues, but in their seriousness, they pale in comparison to what the Stoics worshipped most highly: Doing the right thing. </p><p>There is no Stoic virtue more important than justice, because it influences all the others. Marcus Aurelius himself said that justice is “the source of all the other virtues.” Stoics throughout history have pushed and advocated for justice, oftentimes at great personal risk and with great courage, in order to do great things and defend the people and ideas that they loved. </p><ul><li><a href='https://dailystoic.com/cato/?utm_source=convert-kit&amp;utm_medium=convert-kit&amp;utm_campaign=must-never-accept'>Cato gave his life</a> trying to restore the Roman Republic.</li><li>And Thrasea and Agrippinus gave theirs resisting the tyranny of Nero.</li><li>George Washington and Thomas Jefferson formed a new nation—one which would seek, however imperfectly, to fight for democracy and justice—largely inspired by the philosophy of Cato and those other Stoics.</li><li>Thomas Wentworth Higginson, a translator <a href='https://dailystoic.com/epictetus/?utm_source=convert-kit&amp;utm_medium=convert-kit&amp;utm_campaign=must-never-accept'>of Epictetus</a>, led a black regiment of troops in the US Civil War.</li><li>Beatrice Webb, who helped to found the London School of Economics and who first conceptualized the idea of collective bargaining, regularly re-read <a href='https://dailystoic.com/marcus-aurelius/?utm_source=convert-kit&amp;utm_medium=convert-kit&amp;utm_campaign=must-never-accept'>Marcus Aurelius</a>.</li></ul><p>Countless other activists and politicians have turned to Stoicism to gird them against the difficulty of fighting for ideals that mattered, to guide them towards what was right in a world of so much wrong. A Stoic must deeply believe that an individual can make a