Tim O'Reilly Quotes

Nature does not bestow virtue; to be good is an art.

For Aristotle, habits reigned supreme. The behaviors that occur unthinkingly are the evidence of our truest selves.

The moral virtues, then, are produced in us neither by nature nor against nature. Nature, indeed, prepares in us the ground for their reception, but their complete formation is the product of habit.

I profoundly believe it takes a lot of practice to become a moral slob.

Higher education is not necessarily a guarantee of higher virtue.

True virtue is life under the direction of reason.

If you do not know the laws of right conduct, you cannot form your character.

Moral excellence comes about as a result of habit. We become just by doing just acts, temperate by doing temperate acts, brave by doing brave acts.

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

Perfection of moral virtue does not wholly take away the passions, but regulates them.

Education is the art of making man ethical.

In fact, it is a farce to call any being virtuous whose virtues do not result from the exercise of its own reason.

Assume a virtue, if you have it not. That monster, custom, who all sense doth eat; Of habits devil, is angel yet in this.

He cannot be vertuous that is not rigorous.

It still remains true that no justification of virtue will enable a man to be virtuous.

If one is not virtuous he becomes vicious.

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.

While tenderness of feeling and susceptibility to generous emotions are accidents of temperament, goodness is an achievement of the will and a quality of the life.

The weak-minded man is the slave of his vices and the dupe of his virtues.

We become moral when we are unhappy.

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.

Man cannot be uplifted; he must be seduced into virtue.

In my own case, who have spent my whole life in the practice of virtue, right conduct from habitual has become natural.

Happiness is secured through virtue; it is a good attained by man's own will.

Respect for self is the beginning of cultivating virtue in men and women.