Self-Control is the most important virtue. The ability to restrain your emotions, to check your anger and hate and lust. Without the ability to control your own feelings and emotions, you become little more than an animal or a criminal.
The next most important virtue is what I like to call "self-awareness". This is the ability to recognize, clearly, your own failings as a human being, and believe me, we've all got our problems. Without the ability to recognize your own weaknesses and personality flaws, you can never improve yourself. Say what you will about Alcoholic's Anonymous (I'm a teetotaller, so I don't have an opinion about them although I am aware they are hated by some), they are right when they say that the first step to getting better is to admit you have a problem, and we all have problems, one way or another.
And the third most important is the ability to admit error. Humility, I suppose. We all make mistakes. We ALL make mistakes. That comes from being human. Not only that, sometimes our reasoning is flawed, or sometimes we don't have all the information necessary to make a correct judgement. We need to learn that, as painful as it might be, you might be wrong and your enemies might be correct in some cases. No one is always right, and we really need to get over the shame of being wrong, or the dread of hearing a "I told you so!". In my opinion, this is one of the key problems with humanity - the inability to confront and the sheer fear and horror of hearing a "I TOLD YOU SO, NYAH, NYAH!". The best thing a human being can do is to look at the evidence as clearly as possible. If you're wrong, you're wrong. There's nothing to be ashamed of if you make a mistake. However, there is much shame in clinging on to an idea or paradigm even when the evidence is stacked against it.
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