Quotes About Ethics

Without virtue it is difficult to bear gracefully the honors of fortune.

Now ends clearly differ from one another. For, firstly, in some cases the end is an act, while in others it is a material result beyond and besides that act. And, where the action involves any such end beyond itself, this end is of necessity better than is the act by which it is produced.

Since the objects of imitation are men in action, and these men must be either of a higher or a lower type (for moral character mainly answers to these divisions, goodness and badness being the distinguishing marks of moral differences), it follows that we must represent men either as better than in real life, or as worse, or as they are.

Wicked men obey for fear, but the good for love.

On a similar principle they consider that to know right and wrong is nothing clever, because what the laws speak about it cannot be hard to understand. But this is not justice, except incidentally: it is when actions are done or awards are made in a certain way that they become just.

Happiness consists in the consciousness of a life in which the highest Virtue is actively manifested.

It would then be most admirably adapted to the purposes of justice, if laws properly enacted were, as far as circumstances admitted, of themselves to mark out all cases, and to abandon as few as possible to the discretion of the judge.

Men fancy that because doing wrong is in their own power, therefore to be just is easy. But it is not so: to lie with one's neighbour's wife, and to strike some one near, and the giving with the hand the bribe ... are easy acts, and in men's own power; but to do these things with the particular disposition is neither easy nor in their power.

Every wicked man is in ignorance as to what he ought to do, and from what to abstain, and it is because of error such as this that men become unjust and, in a word, wicked.

One may perhaps be led to suppose that it is virtue that is the end of the statesman's life. Yet even virtue itself would seem to fall short of being an absolute end.

We must as a second best, as people say, take the least of the evils.

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.

Personal beauty is a greater recommendation than any letter of reference.

If happiness is activity in accordance with excellence, it is reasonable that it should be in accordance with the highest excellence.

I have gained this from philosophy: that I do without being commanded what others do only from fear of the law.

Every science and every inquiry, and similarly every activity and pursuit, is thought to aim at some good.

The final cause, then, produces motion through being loved.

Every art and every inquiry, and similarly every action and choice, is thought to aim at some good and for this reason the good has rightly been declared to be that at which all things aim.

Those who excel in virtue have the best right of all to rebel, but then they are of all men the least inclined to do so.

While both [Plato and truth] are dear, piety requires us to honor truth above our friends.

Therefore, the good of man must be the end of the science of politics.

It is clearly better that property should be private, but the use of it common and the special business of the legislator is to create in men this benevolent disposition.

He who can be, and therefore is, another's, and he who participates in reason enough to apprehend, but not to have, is a slave by nature.

The state comes into existence for the sake of life and continues to exist for the sake of good life.