Aristotle Vices And Virtues Quotes

Virtue lies in our power, and similarly so does vice; because where it is in our power to act, it is also in our power not to act...

habits of virtue and vice are caused by acts

Moral virtue is the quality of acting in the best way in relation to pleasures and pains, and that vice is the opposite.

Virtue is a mean between two vices, that which depends on excess and that which depends on defect.

But what matters for questions of virtue and vice is whether your acts are not merely voluntary but also chosen.

Aristotle believed that if you train yourself to be good, by working on your virtues and controlling your vices, you will discover that a happy state of mind comes from habitually doing the right thing.

The study of virtue is not quite the same as the study of morals (right and wrong, good and evil). Aristotle defined the virtues simply as the ways of behaving that are most conducive to happiness in life. Vice was defined as the ways of behaving least conducive to happiness. He observed that the virtues always aim for balance and avoid the extremes of the vices. Aristotle studied the virtues and the vices in his Nicomachean Ethics. It was a book based on experience and observation, not conjecture, about the kind of happiness that was possible for human beings. Cultivating judgment about the difference between virtue and vice is the beginning of wisdom, something that can never be out of date.

The virtue of tolerance is relatively new to political debate; Aristotle did not discuss it. From the way the debate is usually framed, however, one gets the impression that all one has to do to achieve tolerance is to avoid the vice of narrowminded repressiveness. On the contrary, like other virtues, tolerance is opposed by not one vice but two, with grave dangers in each direction.5 The diagram should look not like this: Intolerance Tolerance but like this: Narrowminded Repressiveness—Tolerance—Soft-headed Indulgence

Aristotle also observed that every virtue seems to be bang in the middle of two vices. It occupies what he termed ‘the golden mean’ between two extremes of character.

Aristotle says that virtues are found in the midpoint between two vices. Apparently, our two vices here would be following the syllabus blindly on one side, and, on the other side, following all and every student’s whims to design the course and lessons. After all, students are not the specialists and hired our, I mean, your services trusting you’d make the best decisions for them. – I understand. So, in this sense, a good lesson is one where the learning is relevant to students while also abiding by the course’s goals and objectives. Easier said than done, isn’t it?

Aristotle defined the virtues simply as the ways of behaving that are most conducive to happiness in life. Vice was defined as the ways of behaving least conducive to happiness.