There's a good chance that you've come across the quote, "we are what we repeatedly do," with attribution to Aristotle. In actuality, these precise words were never written by the father of western logic, but by a man who took it upon himself to take the great body of historical knowledge and make it accessible to modern audiences– Will Durant.
This quote helps to illustrate the fact that the things we do over and over again make up who we are. This is the case when we act virtuously and when we pursue vice.
It’s possible that you’ve come across the quote, “we are what we repeatedly do,” with the name of the famous Greek philosopher and polymath written underneath. Though it seems that Aristotle did not say these precise words, they were written by a man that was discussing the ideas of Aristotle in his text Nicomachean Ethics.
We’ll get further into the question of who actually said this quote in the next section. For now, let’s talk a little bit about what it means.
There’s actually a second part to the quote that is often stated along with “we are what we repeatedly do,” making the full expression:
“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.”
The idea here is that excellence isn’t one specific action you take. It’s a way of life. It’s the potential sum of all of the individual habitual actions you take over the course of time.
We aren’t our ideas. We aren’t who we say we are.
We are the aggregate of the things we do.
It’s all too easy to have a completely different conception of yourself than the one that is most evident by your actions. For example, you’ve likely known someone that claimed to hold an ethical perspective on something firmly but then repeatedly acted in a way that seemed to contradict this opinion of theirs.
Coming up with lofty explanations for who we are and why we are the way we are can be incredibly tempting. But at the end of the day, the things that we do over and over again are the things that make us who we are.
“Do not think that what is hard for you to master is humanly impossible; but if a thing is humanly possible, consider it to be within your reach.”
– Marcus Aurelius
Do you wake up in the morning and press the snooze button, or do you jump out of bed ready to attack the day?
When you get home from work, do you throw a TV dinner in the microwave and power up the old XBox, or do you go for an evening stroll and reflect on your day?
When you have free time, do you try and escape from reality through one of the endless distractions available to us, or do you seize the moment to work on something meaningful to you?
These are the things that will really determine who you are in your life. If you want to lead a great life, you need to cultivate good habits that add up over time to excellence.
“We are what we repeatedly do” is only a portion of a longer quote by Will Durant. Often misattributed to Aristotle– which we’ll touch more upon later– these words are found in the section of Durant’s book The Story of Philosophy: The Lives and Opinions of the World’s Greatest Philosophers about Aristotle.
Here’s a more complete look at the passage:
“The golden mean, however, is not, like the mathematical mean, an exact average of two precisely calculable extremes; it fluctuates with the collateral circumstances of each situation, and discovers itself only to mature and flexible reason. Excellence is an art won by training and habituation: we do not act rightly because we have virtue or excellence, but we rather have these because we have acted rightly; “these virtues are formed in man by his doing the actions” we are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit: “the good of man is a working of the soul in the way of excellence in a complete life;... for as it is not one swallow or one find day that makes a spring, so it is not one day or a short time that makes a man blessed and happy.””
– Will Durant
In part VII of The Story of Philosophy, Will Durant sums up some of the thoughts of Aristotle in the section titled “Ethics and the Nature of Happiness.”
In the passage above, he includes a quote from Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics– “these virtues are formed in man by his doing the actions.” Afterward, he reiterates the idea in his own words– “we are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.”
“Every habit and faculty is preserved and increased by correspondent actions, as the habit of walking, by walking; of running, by running.”
– Epictetus
Next, he quotes from the same work of Aristotle– “the good of man is a working of the soul in the way of excellence in a complete life;... for as it is not one swallow or one fine day that makes a spring, so it is not one day or a short time that makes a man blessed and happy.”
The first quote of Aristotle’s that Durant uses here comes from the following passage:
“We are right then in saying, that these virtues are formed in a man by his doing the actions; but no one, if he should leave them undone, would be even in the way to become a good man. Yet people in general do not perform these actions, but taking refuge in talk they flatter themselves they are philosophising, and that they will so be good men: acting in truth very like those sick people who listen to the doctor with great attention but do nothing that he tells them: just as these then cannot be well bodily under such a course of treatment, so neither can those be mentally by such philosophising.”
As you can see, Will Durant has done a tremendous job taking this rather heady collection of words and summarizing it in a succinct and easy-to-digest way. Aristotle is talking about the fact that we don’t do the right things because we are virtuous, but we are virtuous because we do the right things. He goes on to talk about the fact that many people think they are good because they engage with philosophical ideas about what it means to be good and compares this to a person that listens to a doctor tell them about how to heal themselves but doesn’t actually follow his advice.
In short, the idea is that we become excellent and virtuous through our actions. We are not, as we may wish the case, excellent and virtuous just because we like to talk about what it means to be so.
If you haven’t met Will Durant yet, you’re in for a treat. Born in 1885 and passing away in 1981 at the age of 96, Will Durant was an American writer, philosopher, and historian.
He and his wife Ariel were best known for the massive eleven-volume work The Story of Civilization– a truly remarkable undertaking that covers the history of both western and eastern civilization. They published it over the course of four decades– between 1935 and 1975.
Though he is most famous these days for The Story of Civilization, he gained attention nearly a century ago for The Story of Philosophy– the text where we find the quote, “we are what we repeatedly do.”
You can actually find another one of Durant’s books on our list of 21 books that will change the way you think– The Lessons of History, which also throws an honorable mention in the direction of The Story of Philosophy.
Durant led a long and productive life, which points to the fact that he may have taken his own advice in terms of excellence being a habit and not an act.
“Life's like a play; it's not the length, but the excellence of the acting that matters.”
– Seneca the Younger
He took it upon himself to humanize and unify the enormous body of historical knowledge, which he recognized had become so tremendously large that it had started breaking down into esoteric specialties. It was clearly his purpose to help explain the vast collection of human knowledge that had been collected over thousands of years and help make it accessible and valuable for contemporary application.
Will and Ariel Durant were recognized for their efforts in this regard, jointly winning the Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction and the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1968 and 1977, respectively.
Will Durant wasn’t just a writer, though– he was a person who put his words into practice. He fought for fairer working conditions for the American labor force, women’s suffrage, and equal wages. He worked to expand the public’s knowledge of the tremendously complex history of Asia, which he felt had always traditionally been summed up “in a line.” An impressive character indeed, Durant was a man that worked to help people better understand each other's viewpoints and learn to forgive other human beings for their mistakes, waywardness, and failings.
As a brilliant man who was well aware of the cycles and patterns of history, he was able to see the decline and rebuilding of civilizations from a tremendously zoomed-out perspective. If you’ve ever seen the 2006 Mel Gibson film Apocalypto, you might recognize the name Will Durant from the quote that opens the film, which is as follows:
"A great civilization is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself from within."
The great Stoic philosophers knew just how important it was actually to practice what they were preaching. They weren't just discussing Stoic ideas because it made them feel virtuous; they actually worked to build good habits that made it possible for them to become truly great men.
Before we dive into some quotes from the great Stoic philosophers that relate to the notion that "we are what we repeatedly do," let's first quickly look at a fascinating quote from Will Durant.
“So I should say that civilizations begin with religion and stoicism: they end with scepticism and unbelief, and the undisciplined pursuit of individual pleasure. A civilization is born stoic and dies epicurean.”
– Will Durant
Durant saw that the building blocks of civilization incorporate, among other things, a stoic philosophy among a population. Through the desire to live virtuously and do their duty, they are able to create something beautiful, functional, and valuable.
As they get more and more comfortable in their creation, however, they fall into Epicureanism, and society begins to collapse. As a student and teacher of history, Durant saw this cyclical pattern occur time and time again.
“The true worth of a man is to be measured by the objects he pursues.”
– Marcus Aurelius
"Waste no more time arguing what a good man should be. Be one."
– Marcus Aurelius
“The secret of all victory lies in the organization of the non-obvious.”
– Marcus Aurelius
“Concentrate every minute like a Roman – like a man – on doing what’s in front of you with precise and genuine seriousness, tenderly, willingly, with justice. And on freeing yourself from all other distractions. Yes, you can – if you do everything as if it were the last thing you were doing in your life, and stop being aimless, stop letting your emotions override what your mind tells you, stop being hypocritical, self-centered, irritable. You see how few things you have to do to live a satisfying and reverent life? If you can manage this, that’s all even the gods can ask of you.”
– Marcus Aurelius
“If you do not wish to be prone to anger, do not feed the habit; give it nothing which may tend to its increase.”
– Epictetus
“Nothing is in reality either pleasant or unpleasant by nature but all things become so through habit.”
– Epictetus
“What is a good person? One who achieves tranquillity by having formed the habit of asking on every occasion, "what is the right thing to do now?"
– Epictetus
“To make anything a habit, do it; to not make it a habit, do not do it; to unmake a habit, do something else in place of it.”
– Epictetus
“You become what you give your attention to. If you yourself don’t choose what thoughts and images you expose yourself to, someone else will.”
– Epictetus
”What would have become of Hercules do you think if there had been no lion, hydra, stag or boar – and no savage criminals to rid the world of? What would he have done in the absence of such challenges? Obviously he would have just rolled over in bed and gone back to sleep. So by snoring his life away in luxury and comfort he never would have developed into the mighty Hercules. And even if he had, what good would it have done him? What would have been the use of those arms, that physique, and that noble soul, without crises or conditions to stir into him action?”
– Epictetus
“Only a great man, believe me, and one whose excellence rises far above human failings, will not allow anything to be stolen from his own span of time, and his life is very long precisely because he has devoted to himself entirely any time that became available. None of it lay uncultivated and idle, none was under another man's control, for guarding it most jealously, he found nothing worth exchanging for his own precious time.”
– Seneca the Younger
“You must linger among a limited number of master-thinkers, and digest their works if you would derive ideas which shall win firm hold in your mind.”
–Seneca the Younger
"The fool, with all his other faults, has this also, he is always getting ready to live."
–Seneca the Younger
“...the living voice and the intimacy of a common life will help you more than the written word. You must go to the scene of action…”
– Seneca the Younger
“I shall leave it to Death to determine what progress I have made. Therefore with no faint heart I am making ready for the day when, putting aside all stage artifice and actor’s rouge, I am to pass judgment upon myself—whether I am merely declaiming brave sentiments, or whether I really feel them; whether all the bold threats I have uttered against fortune are a pretense and a farce.”
–Seneca the Younger
“I see such a person in you, if only you go steadily on and bend to your task, and see to it that all your actions and words harmonize and correspond with each other and are stamped in the same mould. If a man’s acts are out of harmony, his soul is crooked.”
– Seneca the Younger
“I do not say that the philosopher can always keep the same pace. But he can always travel the same path. Observe yourself, then, and see whether your dress and your house are inconsistent, whether you treat yourself lavishly and your family meanly, whether you eat frugal dinners and yet build luxurious houses. You should lay hold, once and for all, upon a single norm to live by, and should regulate your whole life according to this norm.”
– Seneca the Younger
Will Durant is a man who lived for nearly a century and truly embodied the notion of living a life of purpose and matching one’s words and actions. One has to wonder what he would think about the quote “we are what we repeatedly do” being misattributed to Aristotle– given the depth of his wisdom about human nature and history, it’s likely that he would not be surprised in the least.
Before signing off, let’s take the opportunity to engage with some of the wise words this man dutifully shared over the course of his life.
It’s easy in our modern age to assume that we live in ahistorical times. Nothing could be further from the truth. We are still deeply immersed in the story of history, whether we realize it or not.
This collection of quotes from Will Durant could be seen as an expansion of the quote “we are what we repeatedly do” from the personal level to the level of society and civilization. Durant saw the patterns in history and was well aware of the fact that we, as the collective of humanity, are what we repeatedly do.
“Those who know nothing about history are doomed forever to repeat it.”
– Will Durant
“From barbarism to civilization requires a century; from civilization to barbarism needs but a day.”
– Will Durant
“Civilization begins with order, grows with liberty, and dies with chaos.”
– Will Durant
“Most of us spend too much time on the last twenty-four hours and too little on the last six thousand years.”
– Will Durant
“Civilization is a stream with banks. The stream is sometimes filled with blood from people killing, stealing, shouting and doing the things historians usually record, while on the banks, unnoticed, people build homes, make love, raise children, sing songs, write poetry and even whittle statues. The story of civilization is what happened on the banks.”
– Will Durant
“History reports that the men who can manage men manage the men who can manage only things, and the men who can manage money manage all.”
– Will Durant
“War is one of the constants of history, and it has not diminished with civilization or democracy.”
– Will Durant
“The health of nations is more important than the wealth of nations.”
– Will Durant
“As knowledge grew, fear decreased; men thought less of worshiping the unknown, and more of overcoming it.”
– Will Durant
Beyond the notion that “we are what we repeatedly do,” Durant has a lot of advice that we can find useful in working to be our best selves. Despite the fact that he would not have considered himself a Stoic, it’s easy to spot some ideas here that could have easily been shared by Marcus Aurelius, Epictetus, Seneca the Younger, and other great ancient Stoic philosophers.
“Forget mistakes. Forget failure. Forget everything except what you're going to do now and do it. Today is your lucky day.”
– Will Durant
“Cultivate your garden. Do not depend upon teachers to educate you... follow your own bent, pursue your curiosity bravely, express yourself, make your own harmony.”
– Will Durant
“To speak ill of others is a dishonest way of praising ourselves; let us be above such transparent egotism. If you can't say good and encouraging things, say nothing. Nothing is often a good thing to do, and always a clever thing to say.”
– Will Durant
“The time when you need to do something is when no one else is willing to do it, when people are saying it can't be done.”
– Will Durant
“And last are the few whose delight is in meditation and understanding; who yearn not for goods, nor for victory, but for knowledge; who leave both market and battlefield to lose themselves in the quiet clarity of secluded thought; whose will is a light rather than a fire, whose haven is not power but truth: these are the men of wisdom, who stand aside unused by the world.”
– Will Durant
“Continue to express your dissent and your needs, but remember to remain civilized, for you will sorely miss civilization if it is sacrified in the turbulence of change.”
– Will Durant
“If you wish to be loved, be modest; if you wish to be admired, be proud; if you wish both, combine external modesty with internal pride.”
– Will Durant
Seneca the Younger once wrote, “as long as you live, keep learning how to live.” Here are some of Durant’s thoughts on what the process of learning really looks like when you commit to continuing to learn over the course of decades.
“Sixty years ago I knew everything. Now I know nothing. Education is a progressive discovery of our own ignorance.”
– Will Durant
“In my youth I stressed freedom, and in my old age I stress order. I have made the great discovery that liberty is a product of order.”
– Will Durant
“Inquiry is fatal to certainty.”
– Will Durant
A man that wrote an eleven-volume history of civilization has noticed a thing or two about humanity as a whole. Here are some of his best quotes to really get you thinking about the reality of our human condition.
“If we have never been amazed by the very fact that we exist, we are squandering the greatest fact of all.”
– Will Durant
“The trouble with most people is that they think with their hopes or fears or wishes rather than with their minds.”
– Will Durant
“The only real revolution is in the enlightenment of the mind and the improvement of character, the only real emancipation is individual, and the only real revolutionists are philosophers and saints.”
– Will Durant
“Love one another. My final lesson of history is the same as that of Jesus.
You may think that's a lot of lollipop but just try it. Love is the most practical thing in the world. If you take an attitude of love toward everybody you meet, you'll eventually get along.”
– Will Durant
“Those who have suffered much become very bitter or very gentle.”
– Will Durant
“The most interesting thing in the world is another human being who wonders, suffers and raises the questions that have bothered him to the last day of his life, knowing he will never get the answers.”
– Will Durant
“Man is an emotional animal, occasionally rational; and through his feelings he can be deceived to his heart's content.”
– Will Durant
“History offers some consolation by reminding us that sin has flourished in every age.”
– Will Durant
Will Durant shared many concepts held by the Stoics– the importance of examining our own minds, a commitment to the truth above all else, and the essential role that philosophy plays in our lives– to name a few.
“Knowledge is power but only wisdom is liberty.”
– Will Durant
“Science gives us knowledge, but only philosophy can give us wisdom.”
– Will Durant
“The great snare of thought is uncritical acceptance of irrational assumptions.”
– Will Durant
“Truth will not make us rich, but it will make us free.”
– Will Durant
“There is no real philosophy until the mind turns around and examines itself.”
– Will Durant
“Philosophy begins when one learns to doubt -- particularly to doubt one's cherished beliefs, one's dogmas and one's axioms.”
– Will Durant
Finally, we all know that the Stoics strongly believed in pursuing one’s purposes in life, and it’s clear that this is a sentiment that Durant shared. Let’s finish up with a few quotes about purpose, meaning, and duty in life.
“To give life a meaning, one must have a purpose larger than self.”
– Will Durant
“The individual succumbs, but he does not die if he has left something to mankind.”
– Will Durant
“Never mind your happiness; do your duty.”
– Will Durant
If we are what we repeatedly do, then who are you? It's easy to associate ourselves with our lofty notions about who we should be, but when the rubber meets the road, our actions are really what defines us. Since this is the case, one of the best things you can do is start to build good habits that will improve your health, your ability to be productive and useful, and your capacity for personal growth.
If you're determined to work on yourself and aim for excellence, make sure that you check out our Stoic Quotes blog for more useful info and inspirational quotes.
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