Quotes About Ethics

The most hated sort, and with the greatest reason, is usury, which makes a gain out of money itself, and not from the natural object of it. For money was intended to be used in exchange, but not to increase at interest. And this term interest, which means the birth of money from money, is applied to the breeding of money because the offspring resembles the parent. Wherefore of all modes of getting wealth this is the most unnatural.

Nevertheless, Rhetoric is useful, because the true and the just are naturally superior to their opposites, so that, if decisions are improperly made, they must owe their defeat to their own advocates; which is reprehensible.

not that we should do both (for one ought not to persuade people to do what is wrong), but that the real state of the case may not escape us, and that we ourselves may be able to counteract false arguments, if another makes an unfair use of them.

we cannot be prudent without being good.

Plato is dear to me, but dearer still is truth.

Virtue lies in moderation

The ideal man, takes joy in doing favours for others; but he feels ashamed to have others do favours for him. For it is a mark of superiority to confer a kindness; but it is a mark of inferiority to receive it.

The best kind of friendship, he maintains, is friendship with those to whom we wish well and with whom we can spend time in shared valuable activities, all because of their virtue.

And therefore, if the earlier forms of society are natural, so is the state, for it is the end of them, and the [completed] nature is the end. For what each thing is when fully developed, we call its nature, whether we are speaking of a man, a horse, or a family. Besides, the final cause and end of a thing is the best, and to be self-sufficing is the end and the best.

The law is reason unaffected by desire.

Aristotle insists that habituation, not teaching, is the route to moral virtue (II. 1). We must practise doing good actions, not just read about virtue.

Yet ambition and avarice, almost more than any other passions, are the motives of crime.

No debemos, a pesar de no ser más que hombres, limitarnos, como quieren algunos, a los conocimientos y sentimientos puramente humanos: ni reducirnos, mortales como somos, a una condición mortal; es preciso, por lo contrario, que en cuanto de nosotros dependa nos desatemos de los lazos de la condición mortal, y hagamos lo posible por vivir conforme a lo mejor que hay en nosotros.

The student of politics must study the soul.

Whatever creates or increases happiness or some part of happiness, we ought to do; whatever destroys or hampers happiness, or gives rise to its opposite, we ought not to do.

To feel or act towards the right person to the right extent at the right time for the right reason in the right way - is not easy, and it is not everyone that can do it, hence to do these things well is a rare, laudable and fine achievement.

The megalopsychos cannot let anyone else, except a friend, determine his life. For that would be slavish; and this is why all flatterers are servile and inferior people are flatterers.

Pride, then, seems to be a sort of crown of the virtues; for it makes them greater, and it is not found without them. Therefore it is hard to be truly proud; for it is impossible without nobility and goodness of character.

Again, it is harder to fight with pleasure than with anger, to use Heraclitus' phrase', but both art and virtue are always concerned with what is harder;

Man, when perfected, is the best of animals, but, when separated from law and justice, he is the worst of all; since armed injustice is the more dangerous, and he is equipped at birth with the arms of intelligence and with moral qualities which he may use for the worst ends.

The Ethics of Aristotle is one half of a single treatise of

If there are several virtues the best and most complete or perfect of them will be the happiest one. An excellent human will be a person good at living life, living well and 'beautifully'.

Muchos hombres se abstienen de hacer y, conformándose con sólo tratar las teorías, creen que son filósofos y que por esta vía seran virtuosos. A éstos les ocurre lo mismo que a los enfermos que escuchan con atención al médico, pero que luego no hacen nada de lo que les prescriben.

A plot of this kind would, doubtless, satisfy the moral sense, but it would inspire neither pity nor fear; for pity is aroused by unmerited misfortune, fear by the misfortune of a man like ourselves.