Aristotle Quotes

If one is not virtuous he becomes vicious.

The innocence which is simply ignorance is not virtue.

We become moral when we are unhappy.

One has only as much morality as one has philosophy and poetry.

I think that moral philosophy is useful for framing questions, but terrible at answering them. I think moral psychology is booming right now, and we're making a lot of progress on understanding how we actually work, what our moral nature is.

Moralism doesn't produce morality; it produces immorality.

We have never stopped sin by passing laws; and in the same way, we are not going to take a great moral ideal and achieve it merely by law.

Do people get moral when they don't get ahead?

Wickedness is always easier than virtue; for it takes the short cut to everything.

The endeavor to understand is the first and only basis of virtue.

The difference between weakness and wickedness is much less than people suppose; and the consequences are nearly always the same.

Tis certain that Morality is an indispensable Requisite of true Religion, and there can be none without it. But it would become the Pride and Ignorance of Pagans only, to magnify it, as the Whole of what is necessary.

Of all the things of a man's soul which he has within him, justice is the greatest good and injustice the greatest evil.

That we occasionally violate our own stated moral code does not imply that we are insincere in espousing that code.

Morality is truth in full bloom.

As to ethics, unfortunately, we are still at sea. We never did have any popular base for what little ethics we knew, except the religious theories, and now that our faith is shaken in those theories we cannot account for ethics at all. It is no wonder we behave badly, we are literally ignorant of the laws of ethics, which is the simplest of sciences, the most necessary, the most continuously needed. The childish misconduct of our 'revolted youth' is quite equaled by that of older people, and neither young nor old seem to have any understanding of the reasons why conduct is 'good' or 'bad.

Man is not equally moral at all hours, this is well known. If his morality is judged to be the capability for great self-sacrificing resolutions and self-denial (which, when continuous and grown habitual, are called holiness)

It is better to suffer injustice than to do it.

I'm very interested in why we do good things, or bad things, and where moral judgments come from.

A wrongdoing doesn't give us the right to do wrong.

Since the branch of philosophy on which we are at present engaged differs from the others in not being a subject of merely intellectual interest — I mean we are not concerned to know what goodness essentially is, but how we are to become good men, for this alone gives the study its practical value — we must apply our minds to the solution of the problems of conduct.

People are either good or they're not. Religion doesn't make anybody good, I don't think.

You cannot make men good by law.

It is not good for one's morals to see bad acting

The purpose of morality is to teach you, not to suffer and die, but to enjoy yourself and live.