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We must as second best, as people say, take the least of the evils.
Sep 10, 2025
Freedom is obedience to self-formulated rules.
Everything that depends on the action of nature is by nature as good as it can be.
Pleasure causes us to do base actions and pain causes us to abstain from doing noble actions.
For pleasure is a state of soul, and to each man that which he is said to be a lover of is pleasant.
Philosophy can make people sick.
Happiness is at once the best, the noblest, and the pleasantest of things.
Some vices miss what is right because they are deficient, others because they are excessive, in feelings or in actions, while virtue finds and chooses the mean.
Men are good in but one way, but bad in many.
The pleasures arising from thinking and learning will make us think and learn all the more. 1153a 23
Where it is in our power to act, it is also in our power to not act.
Happiness, then, is found to be something perfect and self-sufficient, being the end to which our actions are directed.
In a word, acts of any kind produce habits or characters of the same kind. Hence we ought to make sure that our acts are of a certain kind; for the resulting character varies as they vary. It makes no small difference, therefore, whether a man be trained in his youth up in this way or that, but a great difference, or rather all the difference.
For legislators make the citizens good by forming habits in them, and this is the wish of every legislator, and those who do not effect it miss their mark, and it is in this that a good constitution differs from a bad one.
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 that is aimed at is not knowledge but action. And it makes no difference whether he is young in years or youthful in character.
Young people are in a condition like permanent intoxication, because life is sweet and they are growing.
When people are friends, they have no need of justice, but when they are just, they need friendship in addition.
It is evidently equally foolish to accept probable reasoning from a mathematician and to demand from a rhetorician demonstrative proofs.
It is possible to fail in many ways . . . 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).
With the truth, all given facts harmonize; but with what is false, the truth soon hits a wrong note.
The virtues [moral excellence] therefore are engendered in us neither by nature nor yet in violation of nature; nature gives us the capacity to receive them, and this capacity is brought to maturity by habit.
In educating the young we steer them by the rudders of pleasure and pain
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
To be conscious that we are perceiving or thinking is to be conscious of our own existence.
It is possible to fail in many ways...while to succeed is possible only in one way.
The wise man does not expose himself needlessly to danger, since there are few things for which he cares sufficiently; but he is willing, in great crises, to give even his life - knowing that under certain conditions it is not worthwhile to live.
The life of money-making is one undertaken under compulsion, and wealth is evidently not the good we are seeking; for it is merely useful and for the sake of something else.
These virtues are formed in man by his doing the actions ... The good of man is a working of the soul in the way of excellence in a complete life.
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.
Happiness is thought to depend on leisure; for we are busy that we may have leisure, and make war that we may live in peace.
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.
He is his own best friend and takes delight in privacy whereas the man of no virtue or ability is his own worst enemy and is afraid of solitude.
The mass of mankind are evidently slavish in their tastes, preferring a life suitable to beasts.
He who is unable to live in society, or who has no need because he is sufficient for himself, must be either a beast or a god.
We make war that we may live in peace.
Bad people...are in conflict with themselves; they desire one thing and will another, like the incontinent who choose harmful pleasures instead of what they themselves believe to be good.
Hence intellect[ual perception] is both a beginning and an end, for the demonstrations arise from these, and concern them. As a result, one ought to pay attention to the undemonstrated assertions and opinions of experienced and older people, or of the prudent, no less than to demonstrations, for, because the have an experienced eye, they see correctly.
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.
The self-indulgent man craves for all pleasant things... and is led by his appetite to choose these at the cost of everything else.
Happiness does not lie in amusement; it would be strange if one were to take trouble and suffer hardship all one's life in order to amuse oneself.
The happy life is thought to be one of excellence; now an excellent life requires exertion, and does not consist in amusement.
It is unbecoming for young men to utter maxims.
We must not listen to those who advise us 'being men to think human thoughts, and being mortal to think mortal thoughts' but must put on immortality as much as possible and strain every nerve to live according to that best part of us, which, being small in bulk, yet much more in its power and honour surpasses all else.
Neither by nature, then, nor contrary to nature do the virtues arise in us; rather we are adapted by nature to receive them, and are made perfect by habit.
Happiness is an activity of the soul in accordance with virtue
If happiness is activity in accordance with excellence, it is reasonable that it should be in accordance with the highest excellence.
Everything that depends on the action of nature is by nature as good as it can be, and similarly everything that depends on art or any rational cause, and especially if it depends on the best of all causes.
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.
We assume therefore that moral virtue is the quality of acting in the best way in relation to pleasures and pains, and that vice is the opposite.
The truly good and wise man will bear all kinds of fortune in a seemly way, and will always act in the noblest manner that the circumstances allow.