QuoteProject
Thus every action must be due to one or other of seven causes: chance, nature, compulsion, habit, reasoning, anger, or appetite.
Aristotle
ShareWTF𝕏

Interpretation

What this quote means

Aristotle suggests that every action we take can be attributed to one of seven fundamental causes.

In this quote, Aristotle outlines a framework for understanding human behavior by identifying seven potential causes of actions. He implies that our choices and behaviors are not arbitrary but can be traced back to specific factors such as chance occurrences, innate qualities of nature, external pressures (compulsion), established patterns (habit), intellectual deliberation (reasoning), emotional responses (anger), and basic desires (appetite). This insight invites us to reflect on how these causes influence our daily actions and decisions.

Themes

ActionCausesBehaviorPhilosophyAristotleChoices

In practice

Example use cases

In a discussion about human behavior, you might use this quote to illustrate the factors that influence decisions.

More from Aristotle

Love is composed of a single soul inhabiting two bodies.
AristotleRead
Those who cannot bravely face danger are the slaves of their attackers.
AristotleRead
For often, when one is asleep, there is something in consciousness which declares that what then presents itself is but a dream.
AristotleRead
You will never do anything in this world without courage. It is the greatest quality of the mind next to honor.
AristotleRead
But if nothing but soul, or in soul mind, is qualified to count, it is impossible for there to be time unless there is soul, but only that of which time is an attribute, i.e. if change can exist without soul.
AristotleRead
The whole is more than the sum of its parts.
AristotleRead

Similar quotes

Every stone here sweats with suffering, I know that. I have never looked at them without a feeling of anguish. But deep in my heart I know that the most wretched among you have seen a divine face emerge from their darkness. That is the face you are asked to see.
Albert CamusRead
Death walks faster than the wind and never returns what he has taken.
Hans Christian AndersenRead
Their sighing, canting, grace-proud faces, their three-mile prayers, and half-mile graces.
Robert BurnsRead
Forming grammatically correct sentences is for the normal individual the prerequisite for any submission to social laws. No one is supposed to be ignorant of grammaticality; those who are belong in special institutions. The unity of language is fundamentally political.
Gilles DeleuzeRead
Human brutes, like other beasts, find snares and poison in the provision of life, and are allured by their appetites to their destruction.
Jonathan SwiftRead
The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao; the name that can be named is not the eternal name. The Nameless is the origin of Heaven and Earth; the Named is the mother of all things.
Lao TzuRead

A little wisdom, now and then

Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.