The Nicomachean Ethics Quotes

“Our virtues are more durable even than bits of knowledge”
― Aristotle, The Nicomachean Ethics

“Where there are ends apart from the actions, it is the nature of the products to be better than the activities.”
― Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics

“If, then, there is some end of the things we do, which we desire for its own sake (everything else being desired for the sake of this), and if we do not choose everything for the sake of something else (for at that rate the process would go on to infinity, so that our desire would be empty and vain), clearly this must be the good and the chief good.”
― Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics

“Now fine and just actions, which political science investigates, admit of much variety and fluctuation of opinion, so that they may be thought to exist only by convention, and not by nature.”
― Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics

“Now each man judges well the things he knows, and of these he is a good judge. And so the man who has been educated in a subject is a good judge of that subject, and the man who has received an all-round education is a good judge in general. Hence a young man is not a proper hearer of lectures on political science; for he is inexperienced in the actions that occur in life, but its discussions start from these and are about these; and, further, since he tends to follow his passions, his study will be vain and unprofitable, because the end aimed at is not knowledge but action.”
― Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics

“To judge from the lives that men lead, most men, and men of the most vulgar type, seem (not without some ground) to identify the good, or happiness, with pleasure; which is the reason why they love the life of enjoyment.”
― Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics

“Further, men seem to pursue honour in order that they may be assured of their goodness; at least it is by men of practical wisdom that they seek to be honoured, and among those who know them, and on the ground of their virtue; clearly, then, according to them, at any rate, virtue is better.”
― Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics

“For one swallow does not make a summer, nor does one day; and so too one day, or a short time, does not make a man blessed and happy.”
― Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics

“For some identify happiness with virtue, some with practical wisdom, others with a kind of philosophic wisdom, others with these, or one of these, accompanied by pleasure or not without pleasure; while others include also external prosperity.”
― Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics

“With those who identify happiness with virtue or some one virtue our account is in harmony; for to virtue belongs virtuous activity.”
― Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics

“For pleasure is a state of soul, and to each man that which he is said to be a lover of is pleasant; e.g. not only is a horse pleasant to the lover of horses, and a spectacle to the lover of sights, but also in the same way just acts are pleasant to the lover of justice and in general virtuous acts to the lover of virtue.”
― Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics

“For clearly if we were to keep pace with his fortunes, we should often call the same man happy and again wretched, making the happy man out to be chameleon and insecurely based. Or is this keeping pace with his fortunes quite wrong? Success or failure in life does not depend on these, but human life, as we said, needs these as mere additions, while virtuous activities or their opposites are what constitute happiness or the reverse.”
― Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics

“Now of the Chief Good (i.e. of Happiness) men seem to form their notions from the different modes of life, as we might naturally expect: the many and most low conceive it to be pleasure, and hence they are content with the life of sensual enjoyment. For there are three lines of life which stand out prominently to view: that just mentioned, and the life in society, and, thirdly, the life of contemplation.”
― Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics

“First, then, let us consider this, that it is the nature of such things to be destroyed by defect and excess, as we see in the case of strength and of health (for to gain light on things imperceptible we must use the evidence of sensible things); both excessive and defective exercise destroys the strength, and similarly drink or food which is above or below a certain amount destroys the health, while that which is proportionate both produces and increases and preserves it. So”
― Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics

“These practices result in some cases from natural disposition, and in others from habit, as with those who have been abused from childhood. When nature is responsible, no one would describe such persons as showing Unrestraint, any more than one would apply that term to women because they are passive and not active in sexual intercourse; nor should we class as Unrestraint a morbid state brought about by habitual indulgence.”
― Aristotle, The Nicomachean Ethics

“For even if the end is the same for a single man and for a state, that of the state seems at all events something greater and more complete whether to attain or to preserve; though it is worthwhile to attain the end merely for one man, it is finer and more godlike to attain it for a nation or for city-states.”
― Aristotle, The Nicomachean Ethics

“It is the mark of an educated man to look for precision in each class of things just so far as the nature of the subject admits; it is evidently equally foolish to accept probable reasoning from a mathematician and to demand from a rhetorician scientific proofs.”
― Aristotle, The Nicomachean Ethics

“But on the major ethical questions, Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle are in agreement—though Aristotle never admits this in so many words.”
― Aristotle, The Nicomachean Ethics

“La virtud parece ser, antes que nada, el objeto de los trabajos del verdadero político{27}, puesto que lo que este quiere es hacer a los ciudadanos virtuosos y obedientes a las leyes.”
― Aristotle, Ética a Nicómaco

“naturaleza humana toda su dignidad y su grandeza.”
― Aristotle, Ética a Nicómaco

“Evidentemente no pueden ser amadas todas las cosas; sólo se ama el objeto amable, es decir, el bien, o lo agradable, o lo útil.”
― Aristotle, Ética a Nicómaco

“El deseo de ser amigo puede ser rápido; pero la amistad no lo es. La amistad sólo es completa cuando media el concurso del tiempo y de todas las demás circunstancias que hemos indicado;”
― Aristotle, Ética a Nicómaco