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About this quote

What does it mean?
Pleasure is a vice only because everyone seeks it, making conformity itself the true sin.
In plain terms
Doing what everyone else does is the real wrong.
What can you take from it?
Conformity is the real vice.

Where it applies

  • social pressure
  • moral reasoning
  • personal choices

Putting it to work

  • question norms
  • avoid conformity

Questions to consider

  • Is following others ever wrong?
  • What makes an act a vice?

Another view

It dismisses shared human needs as vice.

More from Fernando Pessoa

  1. Sailing is necessary, living is not necessary.

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  2. I'm upset by the happiness of all these men who don't know they're unhappy. [...] Because of that, though, I love them all. Dear vegetables!

    Permalink to quote #131
  3. Who doesn't feel commands. He who only thinks what is required in order to win, wins.

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