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

—  Aristotle , Rhetoric

Book I, 1369a.5
Rhetoric
Variant: All human actions have one or more of these seven causes: chance, nature, compulsions, habit, reason, passion and desire
Source: Selected Works

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update April 4, 2024. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Thus every action must be due to one or other of seven causes: chance, nature, compulsion, habit, reasoning, anger, or …" by Aristotle?
Aristotle photo
Aristotle 230
Classical Greek philosopher, student of Plato and founder o… -384–-321 BC

Related quotes

William Hazlitt photo

“Thought depends on the habitual exercise of the speculative faculties; action, on the determination of the will. The one assigns reasons for things, the other puts causes into act. … Such is the effeminacy of the speculative and philosophical temperament, compared with the promptness and vigour of the practical! … Reasoners in general are undecided, wavering, and sceptical, or yield at last to the weakest motive as most congenial to their feeble habit of soul.”

William Hazlitt (1778–1830) English writer

"On Thought and Action"
Table Talk: Essays On Men And Manners http://www.blupete.com/Literature/Essays/TableHazIV.htm (1821-1822)

Leonora Carrington photo

“Reason must know the heart's reasons and every other reason”

Leonora Carrington (1917–2011) Mexican artist, surrealist painter and novelist
Ludwig von Mises photo

“If one rejects laissez faire on account of man's fallibility and moral weakness, one must for the same reason also reject every kind of government action.”

Ludwig von Mises (1881–1973) austrian economist

Planning for Freedom (1952), p. 44

Epictetus photo

“Every habit and faculty is preserved and increased by correspondent actions,—as the habit of walking, by walking; of running, by running.”

Epictetus (50–138) philosopher from Ancient Greece

How the Semblances of Things are to be combated, Chap. xviii.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

David Hume photo

“Tis from the resemblance of the external actions of animals to those we ourselves perform, that we judge their internal likewise to resemble ours; and the same principle of reasoning, carry'd one step farther, will make us conclude that since our internal actions resemble each other, the causes, from which they are deriv'd, must also be resembling.”

David Hume book A Treatise of Human Nature

Part 3, Section 16
A Treatise of Human Nature (1739-40), Book 1: Of the understanding

John R. Commons photo

“While mere process of thinking is the process of habits, ideals, definitions, investigations, classifications, valuations and behavior, due process of thinking, which is due process of law, is the process of correct habits, right ideals, true definitions, sincere investigation, reasonable classification, reasonable value, and justice; whereas its opposite, undue process, is perverse habit, wrong ideals, double meanings, partial investigation, class legislation, confiscation and injustice.”

John R. Commons (1862–1945) United States institutional economist and labor historian

Source: Legal foundations of capitalism. 1924, p. 351-352

Friedrich Nietzsche photo

“One will rarely err if extreme actions be ascribed to vanity, ordinary actions to habit, and mean actions to fear.”

Friedrich Nietzsche book Human, All Too Human

I.74
Human, All Too Human (1878)

Dogen photo

“The primordial Buddhas are saying,
: "Not doing wrong action,
Sincerely doing every kind of good,
naturally clarifies this mind.
This is the Teaching of all the Buddhas."
This is the universal precept of the Seven Buddhas, our Founding Ancestors, and is truly transmitted by earlier Buddhas to later Buddhas and is received by later Buddhas from earlier Buddhas. It is not only the Teaching of the Seven Buddhas but of all the Buddhas. This principle must be investigated and mastered through practice.”

Dogen (1200–1253) Japanese Zen buddhist teacher

"Shoaku makusa : Not Doing Wrong Action" http://wwzc.org/dharma-text/shoaku-makusa-not-doing-wrong-action as translated by Anzan Hoshin roshi and Yasuda Joshu Dainen roshi (2007)

“Justice is a habit (habitus), whereby a man renders to each one his due with constant and perpetual will.”

Josef Pieper (1904–1997) German philosopher

The Four Cardinal Virtues: Prudence, Justice, Fortitude, Temperance (1965)

Lewis Morris (poet) photo

“What power was this—chance, will you say? But chance, what else can it mean
Than the hidden Cause of things by human reason unseen?”

Lewis Morris (poet) (1833–1907) Welsh poet in the English language

"Evensong", line 25, in Songs of Two Worlds: Third series (London: Henry S. King & Co., 1875), p. 23.

Related topics