Ethical Actions Quotes

To be good, and to do good, is all we have to do.

But the virtues we get by first exercising them, as also happens in the case of the arts as well. For the things we have to learn before we can do them, we learn by doing them, e.g. men become builders by building and lyre players by playing the lyre; so too we become just by doing just acts, temperate by doing temperate acts, brave by doing brave acts.

You can be good for the mere sake of goodness; you cannot be bad for the mere sake of badness. You can do a kind action when you are not feeling kind and when it gives you no pleasure, simply because kindness is right; but no one ever did a cruel action simply because cruelty is wrong - only because cruelty is pleasant or useful to him, In other words, badness cannot succeed even in being bad in the same way in which goodness is good. Goodness is, so to speak, itself: badness is only spoiled goodness. And there must be something good first before it can be spoiled.

Happiness is an expression of the soul in considered actions.

It's so much easier to do good than to be good.

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 anything of the sort - but actions which aim at honor and advantage are absolutely the best. The conditional action is only the choice of a lesser evil; whereas these are the foundation and creation of good. A good man may make the best even of poverty and disease, and the other ills of life.

It isn't what we say or think that defines us, but what we do.

Who sows virtue ought to reap honour.

And I came to believe that good and evil are names for what people do, not for what they are. All we can say is that this is a good deed, because it helps someone or that's an evil one because it hurts them. People are too complicated to have simple labels.

I do what I do because it is the right thing to do. I am a warrior, and it is the way of the warrior to fight superior odds.

The gods behold all righteous actions.

Of actions some aim at what is necessary and useful, and some at what is honorable. And the preference given to one or the other class of actions must necessarily be like the preference given to one or other part of the soul and its actions over the other; there must be war for the sake of peace, business for the sake of leisure, things useful and necessary for the sake of things honorable.

You can do more good by being good than any other way.

Our deeds attach themselves to us like the flame to phosphorus. They constitute our brilliance, to be sure, but only in so far as they consume us.

I stopped believing there was a power of good and a power of evil that were outside us. And I came to believe that good and evil are names for what people do, not for what they are.

Morality pertains only to the sphere of man's free will - only to those actions which are open to his choice.

The soul is known by it's acts.

God will judge people on the basis of what they did in light of what they knew.

The shortest way to arrive at glory would be to do that for conscience which we do for glory.

The history of the world shows that when a mean thing was done, man did it; when a good thing was done, man did it.

Religion must be life made true; and life is action, growth, development - begun now and ending never. And a life made true cannot confine itself - it must reach out and twine around every pulsing interest within reach of its uplifting tendrils.

The most important human endeavor is the striving for morality in our actions.

We cannot guess the outcome of our actions... Which is why our actions must always be acceptable in themselves, and not as strategies.

...the life which is best for men, both separately, as individuals, and in the mass, as states, is the life which has virtue sufficiently supported by material resources to facilitate participation in the actions that virtue calls for.

Indeed, we may go further and assert that anyone who does not delight in fine actions is not even a good man.