MacIntyre, Alasdair

"The telos of human existence is eudaimonia, genuine flourishing achieved through virtue."

"A community united only by rules rather than shared goods will eventually fragment."

"The concept of rights presupposes a prior concept of the good."

"Perseverance is the virtue of continuing to pursue the good despite obstacles and failures."

"To be a person is to be engaged in a quest for the good."

"The virtues were not invented any more than planets and motion were invented, they were discovered."

"I can only answer the question 'What am I to do?' if I can answer the prior question 'Of what story or stories do I find myself a part?'"

"Modern moral discourse is in a state of grave disorder."

"The purpose of a university is not to make functional citizens but to educate human beings."

"Emotivism is the doctrine that all evaluative judgments and more specifically all moral judgments are nothing but expressions of preference, expressions of attitude or feeling."

"We are always already inside some tradition or other, and there is no view from nowhere."

"Justice is a practice, and practices are historically situated."

"The unity of virtue is achieved only by those for whom there is a unity to their lives."

"We need to recover a sense of the narrative unity of human life."

"Every discipline has its internal standards of excellence."

"To fall out of work is to fall out of human community."

"The social embodiment of a practice is an institution."

"Virtue is not a solitary thing but something that develops within traditions."

"Modern capitalism has no place for genuine virtues."

"The loss of narrative can be the loss of meaning itself."

"We inherit our understanding of the good from those who came before us."

"A human being who cannot function as an independent practical reasoner is cut off from the possibility of flourishing."

"The concept of justice requires a notion of the good life."

"Traditions are not conservative forces opposed to progress; they are the very vehicles of progress."

"Without virtue, human relationships become mere contracts."

"The liberal self is not grounded in any particular conception of the good."

"Moral reasoning requires the cultivation of habituation and practice."

"To understand virtue, we must understand human flourishing."

"The Enlightenment project was perhaps from the start in ruins."

"Social institutions either sustain or corrupt the practices they embody."