ethics Quotes

Take the case of just actions; just punishments and chastisements do indeed spring from a good principle, but they are good only because we cannot do without them - it would be better that neither individuals nor states should need... ...

There are three things that are the motives of choice and three that are the motives of avoidance; namely, the noble, the expedient, and the pleasant, and their opposites, the base, the harmful, and the painful. Now in respect of... ...

So the good has been well explained as that at which all things aim.

Every art and every inquiry, and similarly every action and pursuit, 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.

The science that studies the supreme good for man is politics.

Music has a power of forming the character, and should therefore be introduced into the education of the young.

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.

Rhetoric is useful because truth and justice are in their nature stronger than their opposites; so that if decisions be made, not in conformity to the rule of propriety, it must have been that they have been got the better... ...

If men are given food, but no chastisement nor any work, they become insolent.

It is the active exercise of our faculties in conformity with virtue that causes happiness, and the opposite activities its opposite.