Aristotle Quotes About Virtue

• Excellence is an art won by training and habituation. We do not act rightly because we have virtue or excellence, but we rather have those because we have acted rightly. We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.

  Aristotle

  Inspirational, Motivational, Inspiring

• The greatest virtues are those which are most useful to other persons.

  Aristotle

  Life, Success, Philosophical

• For man, when perfected, is the best of animals, but, when separated from law and justice, he is the worst of all; since armed injustice is the more dangerous, and he is equipped at birth with the arms of intelligence and with moral qualities which he may use for the worst ends. Wherefore, if he have not virtue, he is the most unholy and the most savage of animals, and the most full of lust and gluttony. But justice is the bond of men in states, and the administration of justice, which is the determination of what is just, is the principle of order in political society.

  Aristotle

  Determination, Animal, Men

  Aristotle, Hugh Griffith (2009). “Aristotle”, p.201, Collector's Library

• Happiness does not consist in pastimes and amusements but in virtuous activities.

  Aristotle

  Inspirational, Inspiring, Motivation

  Aristotle (1953). “Ethics: The Nicomachean Ethics”

• Courage is the mother of all virtues because without it, you cannot consistently perform the others.

  Aristotle

  Mother, Virtue, Consistently

• All virtue is summed up in dealing justly.

  Aristotle

  Character, People, Vices

  Aristotle (1953). “Ethics: The Nicomachean Ethics”

• What the statesman is most anxious to produce is a certain moral character in his fellow citizens, namely a disposition to virtue and the performance of virtuous actions.

  Aristotle

  Character, Anxiety, Political

  Aristotle (1953). “Ethics: The Nicomachean Ethics”

• Happiness is prosperity combined with virtue.

  Aristotle

  Prosperity, Virtue

• The virtues [moral excellence] therefore are engendered in us neither by nature nor yet in violation of nature; nature gives us the capacity to receive them, and this capacity is brought to maturity by habit.

  Aristotle

  Maturity, Giving, Excellence

• Some vices miss what is right because they are deficient, others because they are excessive, in feelings or in actions, while virtue finds and chooses the mean.

  Aristotle

  Mean, Missing, Feelings

  Aristotle, Terence Irwin, Gail Fine (1995). “Aristotle: Selections”, p.373, Hackett Publishing

• Of cases where a man is truthful both in speech and conduct when no considerations of honesty come in, from an habitual sincerity of disposition. Such sincerity may be esteemed a moral excellence; for the lover of truth, who is truthful even when nothing depends on it, will a fortiori be truthful when some interest is at stake, since having all along avoided falsehood for its own sake, he will assuredly avoid it when it is morally base; and this is a disposition that we praise.

  Aristotle

  Honesty, Men, Excellence

• Courage is the first virtue that makes all other virtues possible.

  Aristotle

  Firsts, Virtue

• Neither should we forget the mean, which at the present day is lost sight of in perverted forms of government; for many practices which appear to be democratical are the ruin of democracies, . . Those who think that all virtue is to be found in their own party principles push matters to extremes; they do not consider that disproportion destroys a state.

  Aristotle

  Party, Mean, Thinking

  Aristotle, Aeterna Press (2015). “Politics”, p.143, Aeterna Press

• Virtue means doing the right thing, in relation to the right person, at the right time, to the right extent, in the right manner, and for the right purpose. Thus, to give money away is quite a simple task, but for the act to be virtuous, the donor must give to the right person, for the right purpose, in the right amount, in the right manner, and at the right time.

  Aristotle

  Mean, Simple, Giving

• A proper wife should be as obedient as a slave... The female is a female by virtue of a certain lack of qualities - a natural defectiveness.

  Aristotle

  Wife, Quality, Female

• Virtue is the golden mean between two vices, the one of excess and the other of deficiency.

  Aristotle

  Mean, Two, Vices

• Every virtue is a mean between two extremes, each of which is a vice.

  Aristotle

  Mean, Two, Vices

• He is his own best friend and takes delight in privacy whereas the man of no virtue or ability is his own worst enemy and is afraid of solitude.

  Aristotle

  Single, Men, Worst Enemy

• ...the life which is best for men, both separately, as individuals, and in the mass, as states, is the life which has virtue sufficiently supported by material resources to facilitate participation in the actions that virtue calls for.

  Aristotle

  Men, Politics, Action

• For both excessive and insufficient exercise destroy one's strength, and both eating and drinking too much or too little destroy health, whereas the right quantity produces, increases and preserves it. So it is the same with temperance, courage and the other virtues. This much then, is clear: in all our conduct it is the mean that is to be commended.

  Aristotle

  Drinking, Mean, Exercise

• If a man of good natural disposition acquires Intelligence [as a whole], then he excels in conduct, and the disposition which previously only resembled Virtue, will now be Virtue in the true sense. Hence just as with the faculty of forming opinions [the calculative faculty] there are two qualities, Cleverness and Prudence, so also in the moral part of the soul there are two qualities, natural virtue and true Virtue; and true Virtue cannot exist without Prudence.

  Aristotle

  Men, Two, Soul

• [Prudence] is the virtue of that part of the intellect [the calculative] to which it belongs; and . . . our choice of actions will not be right without Prudence any more than without Moral Virtue, since, while Moral Virtue enables us to achieve the end, Prudence makes us adopt the right means to the end.

  Aristotle

  Mean, Choices, Moral

• Of all the varieties of virtues, liberalism is the most beloved.

  Aristotle

  Liberty, Beloved, Virtue

• Prudence as well as Moral Virtue determines the complete performance of a man's proper function: Virtue ensures the rightness of the end we aim at, Prudence ensures the rightness of the means we adopt to gain that end.

  Aristotle

  Mean, Men, Gains

• If the state cannot be entirely composed of good men, and yet each citizen is expected to do his own business well, and must therefore have virtue, still inasmuch as all the citizens cannot be alike, the virtue of the citizen and of the good man cannot coincide. All must have the virtue of the good citizen - thus, and thus only, can the state be perfect; but they will not have the virtue of a good man, unless we assume that in the good state all the citizens must be good.

  Aristotle

  Men, Perfect, Good Man

  Aristotle (2013). “The Essential Aristotle”, p.275, Simon and Schuster

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