"We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit."
— Aristotle
We Are What We Repeatedly Do
We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.
About this quote
Not a direct Aristotle quotation. Historian Will Durant wrote these words in The Story of Philosophy (1926) to summarize Aristotle's argument in Nicomachean Ethics, Book II, that moral virtue is formed by habit. The original idea is that we become virtuous by practicing virtuous acts — "we become just by doing just acts, temperate by doing temperate acts, brave by doing brave acts."
Source
Paraphrase by Will Durant in The Story of Philosophy (1926), based on Nicomachean Ethics, Book II
