“We become what we repeatedly do.”

—  Sean Covey

Source: The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Teens: The Ultimate Teenage Success Guide

Last update June 3, 2021. History

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Sean Covey 15
author; business executive 1964

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“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.”

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Misattributed
Variant: We are what we repeatedly do, therefore excellence is not an act, but a habit.
Source: Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy: The Lives and Opinions of the World's Greatest Philosophers (1926), reprinted in Simon & Schuster/Pocket Books, 1991, ISBN 0-671-73916-6], Ch. II: Aristotle and Greek Science; part VII: Ethics and the Nature of Happiness: "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 fine day that makes a spring, so it is not one day or a short time that makes a man blessed and happy'" (p. 76). The quoted phrases within the quotation are from the Nicomachean Ethics, Book II, 4; Book I, 7. The misattribution is from taking Durant's summation of Aristotle's ideas as being the words of Aristotle himself.

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“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, therefore, is not an act, but a habit.”

Variant: We are what we repeatedly do. Greatness then, is not an act, but a habit
Source: The Story of Philosophy (1926), p. 87. The quoted phrases within the quotation are from the Nicomachean Ethics, Book II, 4; Book I, 7.
Context: 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 fine day that makes a spring, so it is not one day or a short time that makes a man blessed and happy'.

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“I think there has to be a mutual respect. If there is maturity, it should become apparent to them that you are happy doing it and this is what you want to do. As a second generation, we have all these resources: Do we do what we want or follow passion?”

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LiNK’s Hannah Song: Forever Committed to a Cause https://web.archive.org/web/20160414025408/ttp://www.mochimag.com/article/links-hannah-song-forever-committed-to-a-cause (2010)

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