Quotes About Ethics

But people are most likely to think that they can do wrong without paying the penalty if they are good speakers or men of affairs or have wide experience of litigation, or if they have many friends, or if they are rich.

It is the mark of an educated mind to rest satisfied with the degree of precision which the nature of the subject admits and not to seek exactness where only an approximation is possible. Nicomachean Ethics

Virtue is a mean between two vices, that which depends on excess and that which depends on defect.

Courage is a mean with regard to fear and confidence.

Or, in one word, the habits are produced from the acts of working like to them: and so what we have to do is to give a certain character to these particular acts, because the habits formed correspond to the differences of these.

Tolerance and Apathy are the last virtues of a dying society

It is plain then that the wicked man cannot be in the position of a friend even towards himself, because he has in himself nothing which can excite the sentiment of Friendship. If then to be thus is exceedingly wretched it is a man's duty to flee from wickedness with all his might and to strive to be good, because thus may he be friends with himself and may come to be a friend to another.

Por la misma razón la justicia parece ser, entre todas las demás virtudes, la única que constituye un bien extraño, un bien para los demás y no para sí, porque se ejerce respecto a los demás, y no hace más que lo que es útil a los demás, que son o los magistrados o el pueblo entero.

Once more; it is harder, as Heraclitus says, to fight against pleasure than against anger:

Halk y???nlar? aldat?ld?klar? zaman kendilerini kötü ÅŸeyler yapmaya özendirenlere kar?? kin besler.

For moral excellence is concerned with pleasures and pains; it is on account of pleasure that we do bad things, and on account of pain that we abstain from noble ones. Hence we ought to have been brought up in a particular way from our very youth, as Plato says, so as both to delight in and to be pained by the things that we ought; for this is the right education.

One who surpasses his fellow-citizens in virtue is no longer a part of the city. Their law is not for him, since he is a law to himself.

I having stated in a former part of this treatise that men should choose the mean instead of either the excess or defect, and that the mean is according to the dictates of Right Reason;

El que se deja llevar de la cólera en ocasiones dadas contra los que lo merezcan, haciéndolo además de la manera, en el momento, y durante todo el tiempo que convenga, debe merecer nuestra aprobación. Esta es, sépase bien, la verdadera mansedumbre, si la mansedumbre es digna de elogios.

Men may be bad in many ways, But good in one alone.

From whence it is evident, that those who seek for what is just, seek for a mean; now law is a mean.

But Justice, it must be observed, is a mean state not after the same manner as the forementioned virtues, but because it aims at producing the mean, while Injustice occupies both the extremes.

By choiceworthy in themselves are meant those from which nothing is sought beyond the act of Working: and of this kind are thought to be the actions according to Virtue, because doing what is noble and excellent is one of those things which are choiceworthy for their own sake alone.

Nor was he less blamable for the manner in which he constituted the ephori; for these magistrates take cognisance of things of the last importance, and yet they are chosen out of the people in general; so that it often happens that a very poor person is elected to that office, who, from that circumstance, is easily bought.

Again he urged that that is most choiceworthy which we choose, not by reason of, or with a view to, anything further; and that Pleasure is confessedly of this kind because no one ever goes on to ask to what purpose he is pleased, feeling that Pleasure is in itself choiceworthy. Again, that when added to any other good it makes it more choiceworthy; as, for instance, to actions of justice, or perfected self-mastery; and good can only be increased by itself.

This, by the way, is the reason why we do not allow a man to govern, but Principle, because a man governs for himself and comes to be a despot: but the office of a ruler is to be guardian of the Just and therefore of the Equal.

IX Now that Moral Virtue is a mean state, and how it is so, and that it lies between two faulty states, one in the way of excess and another in the way of defect, and that it is so because it has an aptitude to aim at the mean both in feelings and actions, all this has been set forth fully and sufficiently.

Thus then Happiness is most excellent, most noble, and most pleasant, and these attributes are not separated as in the well-known Delian inscription-- Most noble is that which is most just, but best is health; And naturally most pleasant is the obtaining one's desires.

For to people of that sort, just as to those lacking self-restraint,15 knowledge is without benefit. But to those who fashion their longings in accord with reason and act accordingly, knowing about these things would be of great profit.