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Famous Aristotle Quotes

“For both excessive and insufficient exercise destroy one's strength, and both eating and drinking too much or too little destroy health, whereas the right quantity produces, increases and preserves it. So it is the same with temperance, courage and the other virtues. This much then, is clear: in all our conduct it is the mean that is to be commended.”

MeanLittlesVirtueClearToo MuchProduceExerciseHealthyEatingIncreaseDrinkingPreservesQuantityTemperanceInsufficientEating And DrinkingDrinking Too Much
Author:Aristotle
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“The purpose of the present study is not as it is in other inquiries, the attainment of knowledge, we are not conducting this inquiry in order to know what virtue is, but in order to become good, else there would be no advantage in studying it. For that reason, it becomes necessary to examine the problem of our actions and to ask how they are to be performed. For as we have said, the actions determine what kind of characteristics are developed.”

KnowsKindSaidReasonProblemWould BeActionPurposeOrderAsksVirtueStudyAdvantageDetermineCharacteristicsInquiryOur ActionsAttainmentConducting
Book:Nicomachean Ethics
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“If we state the function of man to be a certain kind of life, and this to be an activity or actions of the soul implying a rational principle, and the function of a good man to be the good and noble performance of these, and if any action is well performed when it is performed in accordance with the appropriate excellence human good turns out to be activity of the soul in accordance with virtue, and if there are more than one virtue, in accordance with the best and most complete.”

IfsMenHumansWellsKindSoulStatesActionCertainTurnsPrinciplesVirtueActivityPerformancesFunctionExcellenceNobleRationalAppropriateGood ManImplyingNicomachean Ethics
Author:Aristotle
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“Again, it is possible to fail in many ways (for evil belongs to the class of the unlimited and good to that of the limited), while to succeed is possible only in one way (for which reason also one is easy and the other difficult—to miss the mark easy, to hit it difficult); for these reasons also, then, excess and defect are characteristic of vice, and the mean of virtue; For men are good in but one way, but bad in many.”

MenWayMeanReasonEvilEasyDifficultClassVirtueFailingMissingSucceedMarkVicesOne WayCharacteristicsExcessUnlimitedDefectsNicomachean Ethics
Book:Complete Works of Aristotle, Volume 2: The Revised Oxford Translation
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