Q0436

Aristotle

A verified English rendering from the curated archive.

English

Virtue lies in a mean.
Thinker Aristotle
School Peripatetic School
Source Nicomachean Ethics II.6–9 (mean)
Theme Meaning
Another quotation More from this thinker

Source context

This English passage is associated with Nicomachean Ethics II.6–9 (mean), within the tradition of Peripatetic School. The wording below is a verified rendering prepared for careful reading rather than a claim of unique translation authority.

A short reading

Read in the register of meaning, the sentence asks the reader to test an assumption rather than to collect a slogan. In Aristotle's wider work, similar claims are usually offered as prompts for judgment: what would have to be true for the sentence to hold, and what would follow if it did?

How to cite this quotation

APA: Aristotle. (n.d.). Virtue lies in a mean. In Philosophy Blind Box. https://www.philosophydef.com/quotes/q0436

MLA: Aristotle. “Virtue lies in a mean..” Philosophy Blind Box, https://www.philosophydef.com/quotes/q0436.

Chicago: Aristotle. “Virtue lies in a mean..” Philosophy Blind Box. Accessed 2026. https://www.philosophydef.com/quotes/q0436.

Same thinker

More from Aristotle

  1. It is through wonder that people both now begin and first began to philosophize.
  2. The human good is activity of soul in accordance with virtue.
  3. Virtues arise in us neither by nature nor contrary to nature; we are fitted by nature to receive them, and are brought to completion by habit.
  4. Virtue is a state concerned with choice, lying in a mean relative to us.
  5. Man is by nature a political animal.

All quotations by Aristotle

Same theme

More on meaning

  1. Virtue is a state concerned with choice, lying in a mean relative to us.
  2. There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide.
  3. Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms — to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way.
  4. Those who have a 'why' to live can bear with almost any 'how'.
  5. We feel that even if all possible scientific questions are answered, the problems of life have still not been touched at all.

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