Did Aristotle say excellence is a habit?

For years, the alleged words of ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle purporting to define excellence as a practice have circulated on the internet. "We're what we repeatedly do," the supposed quote reads. "Excellence, therefore, is not an act, but a habit."

For example, one X user posted the quote in May 2025, adding that it was often on their mind (archived):

I never stop thinking about this quote…

"You are what you repeatedly do. Success therefore, is not a trait but a habit." - Aristotle

— Codie Sanchez (@Codie_Sanchez) May 13, 2025

The post had more than 184,000 views and 5,800 likes as of this writing. The claim appeared several more times on the platform, as well as on Reddit.

However, the quote was misattributed. Aristotle never wrote those words. 

Instead, the quote first appeared in a 1926 book by U.S. historian and philosopher Will Durant titled "The Story of Philosophy: The Lives and Opinions of the World's Greatest Philosophers."

A search of the book revealed that indeed the quote was part of a passage in which Durant discussed Aristotle's "Nicomachean Ethics." Found in the seventh subsection of the second chapter of his book, Durant's full quote read (the parts between quotation marks cited Aristotle):

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."

In sum, the quote was part of an analysis that helps to elucidate Aristotle's philosophy, but was not written by Aristotle himself. Because Aristotle is better known than Will Durant, the quote may have been misattributed to the Greek philosopher to lend it more gravitas. 

Snopes has frequently reported on alleged quotes by famous people, often finding that the quotes were misattributed.