Quotes About Ethics

For though we love both the truth and our friends, piety requires us to honor the truth first.

Yes the truth is that men's ambition and their desire to make money are among the most frequent causes of deliberate acts of injustice.

We must not listen to those who advise us 'being men to think human thoughts, and being mortal to think mortal thoughts' but must put on immortality as much as possible and strain every nerve to live according to that best part of us, which, being small in bulk, yet much more in its power and honour surpasses all else.

Virtue lies in our power, and similarly so does vice; because where it is in our power to act, it is also in our power not to act...

At his best, man is the noblest of all animals; separated from law and justice he is the worst.

Anyone can get angry, but to do this to the right person, to the right extent, at the right time, with the right motive, and in the right way, that is not for everyone, nor is it easy.

It is their character indeed that makes people who they are. But it is by reason of their actions that they are happy or the reverse.

He is happy who lives in accordance with complete virtue and is sufficiently equipped with external goods, not for some chance period but throughout a complete life.

Without virtue, man is most unholy and savage, and worst in regard to sex and eating.

We acquire a particular quality by acting in a particular way.

The greatest crimes are not those committed for the sake of necessity but those committed for the sake of superfluity. One does not become a tyrant to avoid exposure to the cold.

Moral experience—the actual possession and exercise of good character—is necessary truly to understand moral principles and profitably to apply them.

How can a man know what is good or best for him, and yet chronically fail to act upon his knowledge?

Wicked men obey from fear; good men, from love.

What makes a man a 'sophist' is not his faculty, but his moral purpose. (1355b 17)

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.

A courageous person is one who faces fearful things as he ought and as reason directs for the sake of what is noble.

We become just by the practice of just actions, self-controlled by exercising self-control, and courageous by performing acts of courage.

All human happiness or misery takes the form of action; the end for which we live is a certain kind of action.

The man who does not enjoy doing noble actions is not a good man at all.

The ideal man bears the accidents of life with dignity and grace, making the best of circumstances. — Aristotle

Character is that which reveals moral purpose, showing what kind of things a man chooses or avoids.

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.

Those who are not angry at the things they should be angry at are thought to be fools, and so are those who are not angry in the right way, at the right time, or with the right persons.