Famous Aristotle Quote About Excellence Being a Habit Is Actually Misattributed
One of the most popular motivational quotes on the internet - 'We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit' - is wrongly credited to ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle. The quote appears nowhere in his actual writings.
The quote 'We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit' has become one of the internet's most shared pieces of wisdom. It appears on countless websites, social media posts, and motivational posters with Aristotle's name attached.
But scholars say Aristotle never wrote or said these words. The quote doesn't appear in any of his surviving works, including his famous 'Nicomachean Ethics' where he discusses habits and virtue.
The confusion likely started because Aristotle did write about excellence and habits, but in different language. He believed that moral virtues come from repeated good actions, but he expressed this idea in much more complex terms.
Philosophy experts and Reddit discussions have pointed out this misattribution for years. Yet the fake quote continues to spread faster than corrections, showing how hard it is to stop misinformation once it takes hold online.
The quote itself contains good advice about building habits. But it represents modern thinking, not ancient Greek philosophy.
Millions of people share this quote on social media and use it for inspiration, not knowing it's fake. This shows how misinformation spreads online, even with something as simple as motivational quotes.
The misattributed quote will likely continue circulating on social media despite fact-checks.
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