Aristotle Quotes

Heaven and hell suppose two distinct species of men, the good and the bad. But the greatest part of mankind float betwixt vice and virtue.

Vices and virtues are of a strange nature, for the more we have, the fewer we think we have.

There has never been a man mean and at the same time virtuous.

The absence of vices adds so little to the sum of one's virtues.

Evil, which is our companion all our days, is not to be treated as a foe. It is wrong to cocker vice, but we grow narrow and pithless if we are furtive about it, for this is at best a pretense, and the sage knows good and evil are kindred. The worst of men harm others, and the best injure themselves.

I don't subscribe to any particular doctrine or ideology. I just think that there's kind of a good and bad, the good being life in its purest, happiest form, and the other being the darker side of existence.

I've always felt like we're all human beings and we're all basically given the tools to make whatever choices we want to make. How we treat other people. How we treat ourselves. Just the whole philosophy of that and the philosophical logic of that is that we're all capable of great acts of evil, and we're all capable of great acts of good.

The best men are not consistent in good--why should the worst men be consistent in evil?

According to the Stoics, all vice was resolvable into folly: according to the Christian principle, it is all the effect of weakness.

In the common run of mankind, for one that is wise and good you find ten of a contrary character.

And one of the elders of the city , said , speak to us of good and evil. And he answered : You are good in countless ways , and you are not evil when you are not good .

Each of us has a vision of good and of evil. We have to encourage people to move towards what they think is Good.

The whole history of man is continuous proof of the maxim that to divest one's methods of ethical concepts means to sink into the depths of utter demoralization.

Great parts produce great vices as well as virtues.

To do evil for good is human corruption; to do good for good is civil retribution; but to do good for evil is Christian perfection. Though this be not the grace of nature, it is the nature of grace.

The order of nature [is] that individual happiness shall be inseparable from the practice of virtue.

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.

Good and evil, reward and punishment, are the only motives to a rational creature

What is the real relation between happiness and goodness? It is only within a few generations that men have found courage to say that there is none.

When some English moralists write about the importance of having character, they appear to mean only the importance of having a dull character.

We are very wrong to think that some fault or other can exclude virtue, or to consider the alliance of good and evil as a monstrosity or an enigma.

Vice is man's nature: virtue is a habit--or a mask.

When goodness is lost, it is replaced by morality.

Goodness is equally hateful to the wicked, as vice is to the virtuous.

It is very rare to find ground which produces nothing; if it is not covered with flowers, with fruit trees and grains, it produces briers and pines. It is the same with man; if he is not virtuous, he becomes vicious.