MacIntyre, Alasdair

"Traditions are not constraints on human freedom but the very condition of meaningful freedom."

"We become what we repeatedly do; therefore, excellence is a habit."

"The flourishing human life requires stable communities that support virtuous living."

"Narrative is not a luxury but a necessity for making sense of our lives."

"The virtues were not invented any more than euclidean geometry was invented; they were discovered as permanent features of human life."

"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 systematic philosophy came into being as a response to a new social and cultural situation."

"The unity of human life is the unity of a narrative quest."

"Justice is a human virtue which overcomes a particular kind of conflict in human life."

"Without tradition and without the formation provided by initiation into a tradition, we cannot flourish."

"A coward is one who lets fear determine his actions."

"The good life for humans is the life spent in seeking for the good life for humans."

"We all approach our own circumstances as bearers of a particular social identity."

"The narrative of any one life is part of an interlocking set of narratives."

"Emotivism is the doctrine that all evaluative judgments are nothing but expressions of preference."

"Practice is not a means to the goods which are internal to the practices, but rather practice itself is a good."

"The notion of the common good has become largely unintelligible in modern times."

"Liberalism lacks any adequate account of tradition and the social bases of human flourishing."

"Every account of virtue must itself depend on some account of human nature."

"I inherit a particular social and historical situation and that is the basic fact of my existence."

"The virtues are as essential to us as our form."

"We cannot step outside traditions altogether; we can only move from one tradition to another."

"Human action is dependent on practical reasoning, and practical reasoning is dependent on virtue."

"Character is not individual property; it is a social possession."

"The self is not something which is just given to us; we have to construct it."

"A tradition is a living historical entity which sustains argument and debate from within itself."

"Teleology was expelled from nature; it should not have been expelled from human nature."

"The loss of narrative unity in modern life produces a corresponding loss of moral unity."

"To live morally is to live in accordance with a vision of human flourishing."

"The virtuous person is not someone who follows rules, but someone with practical wisdom."