Aristotle Ethics Quotes

#1. Virtue is not merely a state in conformity with the right principle, but one that implies the right principle; and the right principle in moral conduct is prudence.

Aristotle.

#2. The Ethics of Aristotle is one half of a single treatise of which his Politics is the other half. Both deal with one and the same subject. This subject is what Aristotle calls in one place the "philosophy of human affairs;" but more frequently Political or Social Science.

Aristotle.

#3. I have gained this by philosophy ... I do without being ordered what some are constrained to do by their fear of the law.

Aristotle.

#4. Happiness is at once the best, the noblest, and the pleasantest of things.

Aristotle.

#5. If you follow this method with all problems - i.e., thinking a thing out for yourself before looking up what others have thought - you will soon improve your thinking surprisingly.

Henry Hazlitt

#6. It is well said, then, that it is by doing just acts that the just man is produced, and by doing temperate acts the temperate man; without doing these no one would have even a prospect of becoming good.

Aristotle.

#7. Neither by nature, then, nor contrary to nature do the virtues arise in us; rather we are adapted by nature to receive them, and are made perfect by habit.

Aristotle.

#8. Nor is he liberal who gives with pain; for he would prefer the wealth to the noble act, and this is not characteristic of a liberal man. But no more will the liberal man take from wrong sources; for such taking is not characteristic of the man who sets no store by wealth.

Aristotle.

#9. I count him braver who overcomes his desires than him who conquers his enemies, for the hardest victory is over self.

Aristotle.

#10. If happiness is activity in accordance with excellence, it is reasonable that it should be in accordance with the highest excellence.

Aristotle.

#11. Anyone can become angry - that is easy. But to be angry with the right person, to the right degree, at the right time, for the right purpose, and in the right way - this is not easy. ARISTOTLE, The Nicomachean Ethics

Daniel Goleman

#12. Life in accordance with intellect is best and pleasantest, since this, more than anything else, constitutes humanity.

Aristotle.

#13. Every skill and every inquiry, and similarly every action and rational choice, is thought to aim at some good; and so the good had been aptly described as that at which everything aims.

Aristotle.

#14. Everything that depends on the action of nature is by nature as good as it can be.

Aristotle.

#15. Happiness seems to depend on leisure, because we work to have leisure, and wage war to live in peace.

Aristotle.

#16. One could make a victory of those experiences, turning life into an inner triumph, or one could ignore the challenge and simply vegetate, as did a majority of the prisoners.

Viktor E. Frankl

#17. Painting is a matter of finding the right balance between consoling and reassuring the eye and challenging and disturbing the eye.

Paul Kane

#18. Where it is in our power to act, it is also in our power to not act.

Aristotle.

#19. Happy girls are the prettiest

Audrey Hepburn

#20. George Lucas should have distributed the 'source code' to Star Wars. Millions of fans would create their own movies and stories. Most of them would be terrible, but a few would be genius.

Gabe Newell

#21. The first questions naturally raised by a person emerging from the fog of childhood are the same questions that led Aristotle and other great philosophers to think and write deeply on the subjects of first philosophy and ethics.

Alan E. Johnson

#22. It is impossible, or not easy, to alter by argument what has long been absorbed by habit

Aristotle.

#23. Some of you read with me 40 years ago a portion of Aristotle's Ethics, a selection of passages that describe his idea of happiness. You may not remember too well.

Charles Van Doren

#24. Happiness is an activity of the soul in accordance with virtue

Aristotle.

#25. To call the Form [of the Good] eternal is misleading: that something lasts forever does not render it any the better, any more than long-enduring whiteness is whiter than ephemeral whiteness.

Alasdair MacIntyre

#26. Happiness, then, is co-extensive with contemplation, and the more people contemplate, the happier they are; not incidentally, but in virtue of their contemplation, because it is in itself precious. Thus happiness is a form of contemplation.

Aristotle.

#27. It [Justice] is complete virtue in the fullest sense, because it is the active exercise of complete virtue; and it is complete because its possessor can exercise it in relation to another person, and not only by himself.

Aristotle.