Aristotle Quotes

The largest part of goodness is the will to become good.

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

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.

I've been deeply influenced by Aristotle's idea that virtue is a habit, something you practice and get better at, rather than something that comes naturally. 'The control of the appetites by right reason,' is how he defined it.

Great parts produce great vices as well as virtues.

Virtue depends partly upon training and partly upon practice; you must learn first, and then strengthen your learning by actions.

It is not enough merely possess virtue, as if it were an art; it should be practiced.

I just want to be as good a person as I can be.

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. But most people do not do these, but take refuge in theory and think they are being philosophers and will become good in this way, behaving somewhat like patients who listen attentively to their doctors, but do none of the things they are ordered to do.

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

No one is born without vices, and he is the best man who is encumbered with the least.

The primary goal in the education of children is to teach, and to give the example of, a virtuous life.

Virtue, though she gets her beginning from nature, yet receives her finishing touches from learning.

It is the repeated performance of just and temperate actions that produces virtue.

Virtue is not an end in itself. Virtue is not its own reward or sacrificial fodder for the reward of evil. Life is the reward of virtue-and happiness is the goal and the reward of life.

I don't think goodness is something that you learn. If you're left adrift in the world to learn goodness from it, you would be in trouble.

Men become builders by building and lyreplayers by playing the lyre; so too we become just by doing just acts, temperate by doing temperate acts, brave by doing brave acts.

A man who knows all goods and all truths, as many as can be known, but does not shun evils, knows nothing.

Higher education is not necessarily a guarantee of higher virtue.

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.

But goodness alone is never enough. A hard, cold wisdom is required for goodness to accomplish good. Goodness without wisdom always accomplishes evil.

Without virtue, happiness cannot be.

People often tell me I could be a great man. I'd rather be a good man.

Education must have two foundations --morality as a support for virtue, prudence as a defense for self against the vices of others. By letting the balance incline to the side of morality, you only make dupes or martyrs; by letting it incline to the other, you make calculating egoists.