Vol. 06 · Misquoted ·Attribution ·320 of 348
"We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit. — Aristotle"
They never said that.
What people say
"We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit. — Aristotle"
What was actually said
"These virtues are formed in man by his doing the actions." Will Durant (paraphrasing Aristotle) — Nicomachean Ethics II.1 (c. 340 BC, paraphrased by Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy, 1926)
Why it stuck
Durant paraphrased Aristotle for a popular 1926 intro to philosophy. The neat sentence ("we are what we repeatedly do… habit") is Durant's, not Aristotle's. Aristotle's Greek is much less aphoristic.
Durant acknowledged it was his compression; the attribution to Aristotle alone emerged in the 1980s.
Know another line by heart?
Play the duel and see how many you can spot. Or browse the whole shelf.