Aristotle quotes on virtue, knowledge, and happiness

Actually reading Aristotle's Nichomachean Ethics is worth it. Not because he's right about everything (he has some pretty messed up and weird views), but because it's challenging and good to think on, and chances are you'll take something away for yourself that you wouldn't have gotten from some webpage that took one-liners out of context, some of which aren't even by Aristotle.

The level of precision a subject can reach is peculiar to that subject, but it doesn't follow that nothing can be accurately predicated of it:

"It is characteristic of such knowledge [ethics] that it should be deficient in “exactness,” in precision of statement, and closeness of logical concatenation. We must not look for a mathematics of conduct. The subject-matter of Human Conduct is not governed by necessary and uniform laws. But this does not mean that it is subject to no laws."

"[T]he man of education will seek exactness so far in each subject as the nature of the thing admits, it being plainly much the same absurdity to put up with a mathematician who tries to persuade instead of proving, and to demand strict demonstrative reasoning of a Rhetorician."

https://www.gutenberg.org/files/8438/8438-h/8438-h.htm

The first quote is not even a quote from Aristotle but from Will Durant’s book, The Story of Philosophy (1926)

> 2. "Happiness depends upon ourselves."

he's quiet possibly referring to happiness as a relationship (with family, friends, colleagues, citizens etc) rather than just by oneself / isolation / individual. he famously said "man by nature is a political animal" (or social if you prefer)

“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.”

Aristotle never said this. It's Will Durant.

https://medium.com/the-mission/my-favourite-quote-of-all-tim...

https://old.reddit.com/r/askphilosophy/comments/s2n3s/source...

This invalidates the post for me, it takes it from academic research to fanboy posting.

> "Friendship is a single soul dwelling in two bodies."

What a cool way to convey the benefits of having strong friendships.

If you ever wondered, those are among the things that made that single person standing out of the crowd od Humanity for more than two thousands years.<3

Much of this is either simply not Aristotle, or a paraphrase from one of his works incorrectly attributed to another. My slop meter is pinging.

Edit:

Between the misattributions, fabricated quotes, listicle format, thin explanatory paragraphs, and use of “delve” (posted Nov 2024 - during ChatGPT’s Delve Era), this is a pretty embarrassing thing for a Liberal Arts college to post.

  The aim of the wise is not to secure pleasure, but to avoid pain.

Reminds me of Charlie Munger's Inversion principle that he borrowed from German mathematician Carl Gustav Jacob Jacobi's man muss immer umkehren. https://fs.blog/inversion/

  We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.

As counter points, read Cedirc Chin's Problems with deliberate practice, https://commoncog.com/the-problems-with-deliberate-practice/ and Sensemaking as the heart of expertise, https://commoncog.com/sensemaking-heart-of-expertise/

  It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.

This Amjad Masad comment lives rent-free in my head: "Tolerating some amount of cognitive dissonance is one of the best things that I was able to develop in myself ... people don't update their beliefs when new evidence comes to light ... The drive to avoid cognitive dissonance shackles you to your existing beliefs (see confirmation bias)". https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11799477 (2016).

cf. Why people that are often right change their minds often, https://fs.blog/some-advice-from-jeff-bezos/

Nice!

it do be like that