Aristotle

Aristotle

Aristotle was a Greek philosopher and polymath during the Classical period in Ancient Greece. Taught by Plato, he was the founder of the Lyceum, the Peripatetic school of philosophy, and the Aristotelian tradition.

284 Quotes

"Happiness depends upon ourselves."
Aristotle
"Those that know, do. Those that understand, teach."
Aristotle
"Moral excellence comes about as a result of habit. We become just by doing just acts, temperate by doing temperate acts, brave by doing brave acts."
Aristotle
"Change in all things is sweet."
Aristotle
"There is only one way to avoid criticism: do nothing, say nothing, and be nothing."
Aristotle
"If one way be better than another, that you may be sure is natures way."
Aristotle
"We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit."
Aristotle
"Criticism is something you can easily avoid by saying nothing, doing nothing, and being nothing."
Aristotle
"First, have a definite, clear practical ideal; a goal, an objective. Second, have the necessary means to achieve your ends; wisdom, money, materials, and methods. Third, adjust all your means to that end."
Aristotle
"Well begun is half done."
Aristotle
"It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it."
Aristotle
"In all things of nature there is something of the marvellous."
Aristotle
"We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit."
Aristotle
"The energy of the mind is the essence of life."
Aristotle
"Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom."
Aristotle
"What is a friend? A single soul dwelling in two bodies."
Aristotle
"Educating the mind without educating the heart is no education at all."
Aristotle
"Hope is a waking dream."
Aristotle
"No great mind has ever existed without a touch of madness."
Aristotle
"Excellence is never an accident. It is always the result of high intention, sincere effort, and intelligent execution; it represents the wise choice of many alternatives - choice, not chance, determines your destiny."
Aristotle
"Anybody can become angry — that is easy, but to be angry with the right person and to the right degree and at the right time and for the right purpose, and in the right way — that is not within everybody's power and is not easy."
Aristotle
"A friend to all is a friend to none."
Aristotle
"Wishing to be friends is quick work, but friendship is a slow ripening fruit."
Aristotle
"Happiness is the meaning and the purpose of life, the whole aim and end of human existence."
Aristotle
"Those who educate children well are more to be honored than they who produce them; for these only gave them life, those the art of living well."
Aristotle
"Patience is bitter, but its fruit is sweet."
Aristotle
"He who has overcome his fears will truly be free."
Aristotle
"To perceive is to suffer."
Aristotle
"Those who know, do. Those that understand, teach."
Aristotle
"The educated differ from the uneducated as much as the living differ from the dead."
Aristotle
"Whosoever is delighted in solitude, is either a wild beast or a god."
Aristotle
"I count him braver who overcomes his desires than him who conquers his enemies, for the hardest victory is over self."
Aristotle
"Poverty is the parent of revolution and crime."
Aristotle
"The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance."
Aristotle
"It is not enough to win a war; it is more important to organize the peace."
Aristotle
"The antidote for fifty enemies is one friend."
Aristotle
"Pleasure in the job puts perfection in the work."
Aristotle
"The high-minded man must care more for the truth than for what people think."
Aristotle
"One swallow does not make a summer, neither does one fine day; similarly one day or brief time of happiness does not make a person entirely happy."
Aristotle
"To write well, express yourself like the common people, but think like a wise man."
Aristotle
"Man is by nature a social animal; an individual who is unsocial naturally and not accidentally is either beneath our notice or more than human. Society is something that precedes the individual. Anyone who either cannot lead the common life or is so self-sufficient as not to need to, and therefore does not partake of society, is either a beast or a god."
Aristotle
"Learning is not child's play; we cannot learn without pain."
Aristotle
"The whole is greater than the sum of its parts."
Aristotle
"For the things we have to learn before we can do them, we learn by doing them."
Aristotle
"I have gained this by philosophy; I do without being ordered what some are constrained to do by their fear of the law."
Aristotle
"The more you know, the more you know you don't know."
Aristotle
"It is not always the same thing to be a good man and a good citizen."
Aristotle
"All human actions have one or more of these seven causes: chance, nature, compulsion, habit, reason, passion, and desire."
Aristotle
"It is during our darkest moments that we must focus to see the light."
Aristotle
"He who cannot be a good follower cannot be a good leader."
Aristotle
"Without friends, no one would want to live, even if he had all other goods."
Aristotle
"Wit is educated insolence."
Aristotle
"All men by nature desire to know."
Aristotle
"Dignity does not consist in possessing honors, but in the consciousness that we deserve them."
Aristotle
"Nature does nothing uselessly."
Aristotle
"Wise men speak when they have something to say, fools speak because they have to say something"
Aristotle
"All paid jobs absorb and degrade the mind."
Aristotle
"Where your talents and the needs of the world cross, there lies your vocation."
Aristotle
"Misfortune shows those who are not really friends."
Aristotle
"Learning is an ornament in prosperity, a refuge in adversity, and a provision in old age."
Aristotle
"Happiness is a state of activity."
Aristotle
"All persons ought to endeavor to follow what is right, and not what is established."
Aristotle
"Through discipline comes freedom."
Aristotle
"The secret to humor is surprise."
Aristotle
"Great men are always of a nature originally melancholy."
Aristotle
"Character may almost be called the most effective means of persuasion."
Aristotle
"Fear is pain arising from the anticipation of evil."
Aristotle
"We make war that we may live in peace."
Aristotle
"To lead an orchestra, you must turn your back on the crowd"
Aristotle
"The only stable state is the one in which all men are equal before the law."
Aristotle
"A friend is a second self."
Aristotle
"Happiness belongs to the self-sufficient."
Aristotle
"Men create gods after their own image, not only with regard to their form, but with regard to their mode of life."
Aristotle
"PLOT is CHARACTER revealed by ACTION."
Aristotle
"Tolerance and apathy are the last virtues of a dying society."
Aristotle
"Love is composed of a single soul inhabiting two bodies."
Aristotle
"All who have meditated on the art of governing mankind have been convinced that the fate of empires depends on the education of youth."
Aristotle
"These virtues are formed in man by his doing the actions ... The good of man is a working of the soul in the way of excellence in a complete life."
Aristotle
"Anger Is A Gift"
Aristotle
"With respect to the requirement of art, the probable impossible is always preferable to the improbable possible."
Aristotle
"Bad people...are in conflict with themselves; they desire one thing and will another, like the incontinent who choose harmful pleasures instead of what they themselves believe to be good."
Aristotle
"The gods too are fond of a joke."
Aristotle
"Man is a goal-seeking animal. His life only has meaning if he is reaching out and striving for his goals."
Aristotle
"Democracy arose from men's thinking that if they are equal in any respect, they are equal absolutely."
Aristotle
"Quality is not an act, it is a habit."
Aristotle
"Man is by nature a political animal."
Aristotle
"The self-indulgent man craves for all pleasant things... and is led by his appetite to choose these at the cost of everything else."
Aristotle
"If you would understand anything, observe its beginning and its development"
Aristotle
"The best friend is the man who in wishing me well wishes it for my sake."
Aristotle
"For man, when perfected, is the best of animals, but, when separated from law and justice, he is the worst of all; since armed injustice is the more dangerous, and he is equipped at birth with the arms of intelligence and with moral qualities which he may use for the worst ends. Wherefore, if he have not virtue, he is the most unholy and the most savage of animals, and the most full of lust and gluttony. But justice is the bond of men in states, and the administration of justice, which is the determination of what is just, is the principle of order in political society."
Aristotle
"The pleasures arising from thinking and learning will make us think and learn all the more. 1153a 23"
Aristotle
"For though we love both the truth and our friends, piety requires us to honor the truth first."
Aristotle
"Yes the truth is that men's ambition and their desire to make money are among the most frequent causes of deliberate acts of injustice."
Aristotle
"It is well to be up before daybreak, for such habits contribute to health, wealth, and wisdom."
Aristotle
"Young people are in a condition like permanent intoxication, because life is sweet and they are growing."
Aristotle
"Happiness is a quality of the soul...not a function of one's material circumstances."
Aristotle
"The beauty of the soul shines out when a man bears with composure one heavy mischance after another, not because he does not feel them, but because he is a man of high and heroic temper."
Aristotle
"We become brave by doing brave acts."
Aristotle
"ما أجمل أن تنجز ما اتفق الناس على أنه مستحيل"
Aristotle
"They who love in excess also hate in excess."
Aristotle
"Anybody can become angry — that is easy, but to be angry with the right person and to the right degree and at the right time and for the right purpose, and in the right way — that is not within everybody’s power and is not easy."
Aristotle
"Bring your desires down to your present means. Increase them only when your increased means permit."
Aristotle
"It is the mark of an educated man to look for precision in each class of things just so far as the nature of the subject admits; it is evidently equally foolish to accept probable reasoning from a mathematician and to demand from a rhetorician scientific proof."
Aristotle
"A tragedy is a representation of an action that is whole and complete and of a certain magnitude. A whole is what has a beginning and middle and end."
Aristotle
"We should behave to our friends as we would wish our friends behave to us."
Aristotle
"Probable impossibilities are to be preferred to improbable possibilities."
Aristotle
"If things do not turn out as we wish, we should wish for them as they turn out."
Aristotle
"Don’t ask who is now, but who he has always been."
Aristotle
"Tyranny is a kind of monarchy which has in view the interest of the monarch only; oligarchy has in view the interest of the wealthy; democracy of the needy: none of them common good of all."
Aristotle
"Philosophy is the science which considers truth."
Aristotle
"Inequality is everywhere at the bottom of faction, for in general faction arises from men’s striving for what is equal."
Aristotle
"The greatest thing by far is to be a master of metaphor; it is a sign of genius, since a good metaphor implies an intuitive perception of the similarity in the dissimilar."
Aristotle
"Wise men speak when they have something to say, fools speak because they have to say something."
Aristotle
"A poet must be a composer of plots rather than of verses."
Aristotle
"In all things of nature there is something of the marvelous."
Aristotle
"We are what we repeatedly do."
Aristotle
"Therefore, even the lover of myth is a philosopher; for myth is composed of wonder."
Aristotle
"The greater the number of owners, the less the respect for common property."
Aristotle
"Hope is the dream of a waking man."
Aristotle
"Comedy has had no history, because it was not at first treated seriously."
Aristotle
"Man is by his own nature a political being."
Aristotle
"Only the best of poets have the right to pass judgments on the merit or defects of poetry, for they alone have experienced the creative process form beginning to end, and they alone can rightly understand it."
Aristotle
"Anyone who has no need of anybody but himself is either a beast or a God."
Aristotle
"Identity exists where the Complication and Unravelling are the same."
Aristotle
"It’s the fastest who gets paid, and it’s the fastest who gets laid."
Aristotle
"Choice, not chance, determines your destiny."
Aristotle
"For what were the business of a speaker, if the Thought were revealed quite apart from what he says?"
Aristotle
"Men cannot know each other till they have ‘eaten salt together’."
Aristotle
"Democracy arises out of the notion that those who are equal in any respect are equal in all respects; because men are equally free, they claim to be absolutely equal."
Aristotle
"In all things, change is sweet."
Aristotle
"Most people would rather give than get affection."
Aristotle
"The good of the individual by himself is certainly desirable enough, but that of a nation and of cities is nobler and more divine."
Aristotle
"What soon grows old? Favor."
Aristotle
"Dignity does not consist in possessing honors, but in deserving them."
Aristotle
"Correct habituation distinguishes a good political system from a bad one."
Aristotle
"Those who cannot face danger like men become the slaves of any invader."
Aristotle
"Republics decline into democracies and democracies degenerate into despotisms."
Aristotle
"The hand is the instrument of instruments."
Aristotle
"There is no difference between not having laws and not following the laws."
Aristotle
"The secret of business is to know something that nobody else knows."
Aristotle
"Memory is the scribe of the soul."
Aristotle
"It is in the interests of the tyrant to make his subjects poor… the people are so occupied with their daily tasks that they have no time for rebellion."
Aristotle
"Virtue consists more in doing good than refraining from evil."
Aristotle
"The best form of government is the one in which every man, whoever he is, can act best and live happily."
Aristotle
"The value of life lies in the power of contemplation and not mere survival."
Aristotle
"Political society exists for the sake of noble actions, and not of mere companionship."
Aristotle
"The end of labor is to gain leisure."
Aristotle
"The first principle of all action is leisure."
Aristotle
"Subjects are less apprehensive of illegal treatment from a ruler whom they consider god-fearing and pious."
Aristotle
"The weak are always anxious for justice and equality. The strong pay no heed to either."
Aristotle
"Men are swayed more by fear than by reverence."
Aristotle
"The many are more incorruptible than the few; they are like the greater quantity of water which is less easily corrupted than a little."
Aristotle
"The greatest virtues are those which are most useful to other persons."
Aristotle
"Youth is easily deceived because it is quick to hope."
Aristotle
"The most perfect political community is one in which the middle class is in control and outnumbers both of the other classes."
Aristotle
"Of all the varieties of virtues, liberalism is the most beloved."
Aristotle
"The beginning seems to be more than half of the whole."
Aristotle
"Where the laws are not sovereign, there you find demagogues."
Aristotle
"Plato is dear to me, but dearer still is truth."
Aristotle
"It is more proper that law should govern than any one of the citizens."
Aristotle
"Reason is a light that God has kindled in the soul."
Aristotle
"The basis of a democratic state is liberty."
Aristotle
"The aim of the wise is not to secure pleasure, but to avoid pain."
Aristotle
"The Law is Reason free from Passion."
Aristotle
"In a democracy the poor will have more power than the rich, because there are more of them, and the will of the majority is supreme."
Aristotle
"The guest will judge better of a feast than the cook."
Aristotle
"The easy alteration of existing laws in favor of new and different ones weakens the power of law itself."
Aristotle
"The least initial deviation from the truth is multiplied later a thousandfold."
Aristotle
"It is of the nature of desire not to be satisfied, and most men live only for the gratification of it."
Aristotle
"Even when laws have been written down, they ought not always to remain unaltered."
Aristotle
"The man who does not enjoy doing noble actions is not a good man at all."
Aristotle
"The intention makes the crime."
Aristotle
"Democracy is the least bad of the deviations."
Aristotle
"All virtue is summed up in dealing justly."
Aristotle
"A multitude is a better judge of many things than any individual."
Aristotle
"Justice is the bond of men in states, for the administration of justice is the principle of order in political society."
Aristotle
"The best way to teach morality is to make it a habit with children."
Aristotle
"To die to escape from poverty or love or anything painful is not the mark of a brave man, but rather of a coward."
Aristotle
"The soul never thinks without a mental picture."
Aristotle
"It is unbecoming for young men to utter maxims."
Aristotle
"To seek for utility everywhere is entirely unsuited to men that are great-souled and free."
Aristotle
"We must be neither cowardly nor rash but courageous."
Aristotle
"Without virtue, man is most unholy and savage, and worst in regard to sex and eating."
Aristotle
"He who had never learned to obey cannot be a good leader."
Aristotle
"Of moral states to be avoided there are three kinds: malice, incontinence, bestiality."
Aristotle
"There is a foolish corner in the brain of the wisest man."
Aristotle
"Good cannot be a single and universal general notion; if it were, it would not be predictable in all the categories, but only in one."
Aristotle
"Whatever lies within our power to do lies also within our power not to do."
Aristotle
"The young man is not a fit student of Moral Philosophy, for he has no experience in the actions of life."
Aristotle
"The happy life is thought to be one of excellence; an excellent life requires exertion and does not consist in amusement."
Aristotle
"What makes a man a ‘sophist’ is not his faculty, but his moral purpose."
Aristotle
"The ultimate value of life depends upon awareness and the power of contemplation rather than upon mere survival."
Aristotle
"Good character is the indispensable condition and chief determinant of happiness, itself the goal of all human doing."
Aristotle
"The ideal man bears the accidents of life with dignity and grace, making the best of circumstances."
Aristotle
"Poverty needs many things, but greed everything."
Aristotle
"Character is that which reveals moral purpose, showing what kind of things a man chooses or avoids."
Aristotle
"Plants exist for the sake of animals and animals for the sake of men."
Aristotle
"Wisdom or intelligence and prudence are intellectual, liberality and temperance are moral virtues."
Aristotle
"The quality of life is determined by its activities."
Aristotle
"Beauty is better than any recommendation letter."
Aristotle
"Man’s work as Man is accomplished by virtue of Practical Wisdom and Moral Virtue, the latter giving the right aim and direction, the former the right means to its attainment."
Aristotle
"There are three lines of life which stand out prominently to view: the life of sensual enjoyment, the life in society, and the life of contemplation."
Aristotle
"War is a school for virtue."
Aristotle
"Each art must use its tools, each body its soul."
Aristotle
"It is best to rise from life as from a banquet, neither thirsty nor drunken."
Aristotle
"Only the cunning needs excuses."
Aristotle
"He is happy who lives in accordance with complete virtue and is sufficiently equipped with external goods, not for some chance period but throughout a complete life."
Aristotle
"No one likes one whom he fears."
Aristotle
"The good of man is a working of the soul in the way of excellence in a complete life."
Aristotle
"Before a crowd, the ignorant are more persuasive than the educated."
Aristotle
"Nothing is without a cause."
Aristotle
"Happiness is a quality of the soul…not a function of one’s material circumstances."
Aristotle
"Experience created the art but inexperience created the luck."
Aristotle
"The human life is governed by nature and laws."
Aristotle
"A man without regrets cannot be cured."
Aristotle
"Happiness is the highest good, being a realization and perfect practice of virtue."
Aristotle
"The noblest expenditure is that which is made in the Divine Service."
Aristotle
"Excellence is never an accident. It is always the result of high intention, sincere effort, and intelligent execution."
Aristotle
"Courage is the first of human qualities because it is the quality which guarantees the others."
Aristotle
"Shall we not, like archers who have a mark to aim at, be more likely to hit upon what is right?"
Aristotle
"Evil brings men together."
Aristotle
"It is rather the case that we desire something because we believe it to be good than that we believe a thing to be good because we desire it. It is the thought that starts things off."
Aristotle
"Good habits formed at youth make all the difference."
Aristotle
"Even that some people try deceived me many times… I will not fail to believe that somewhere, someone deserves my trust."
Aristotle
"He who can be, and therefore is, another’s, and he who participates in reason enough to apprehend, but not to have, is a slave by nature."
Aristotle
"All terrible things are more terrible if they give us no chance of retrieving a blunder—either no chance at all, or only one that depends on our enemies and not ourselves."
Aristotle
"Justice is the loveliest and health is the best, but the sweetest to obtain is the heart’s desire."
Aristotle
"What affirmation and denial are in the case of thinking, pursuit and avoidance are in the case of longing for something."
Aristotle
"Comedy aims at representing men as worse, Tragedy as better than in actual life."
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 those because we have acted rightly."
Aristotle
"It is not once nor twice but times without number that the same ideas make their appearance in the world."
Aristotle
"Poetry is finer and more philosophical than history; for poetry expresses the universal, and history only the particular."
Aristotle
"Jealousy is both reasonable and belongs to reasonable men, while envy is base and belongs to the base, for the one makes himself get good things by jealousy, while the other does not allow his neighbor to have them through envy."
Aristotle
"It is clearly better that property should be private, but the use of it common; and the special business of the legislator is to create in men this benevolent disposition."
Aristotle
"If you would understand anything, observe its beginning and its development."
Aristotle
"If one way be better than another, that you may be sure is nature’s way."
Aristotle
"Poetry is for an intelligent man or a madman."
Aristotle
"What is the Good for man? It must be the ultimate end or object of human life: something that is in itself completely satisfying. Happiness fits this description…we always choose it for itself, and never for any other reason."
Aristotle
"If happiness is activity in accordance with excellence, it is reasonable that it should be in accordance with the highest excellence."
Aristotle
"Homer has taught all other poets the art of telling lies skillfully."
Aristotle
"Since the things we do determine the character of life, no blessed person can become unhappy, for he will never do those things which are hateful and petty."
Aristotle
"Tragedy is an imitation not only of a complete action, but also of incidents arousing pity and fear."
Aristotle
"It is impossible that there should be demonstration of absolutely everything; for then there would be an infinite regress, so that there would still be no demonstration."
Aristotle
"Humor is the only test of gravity, and gravity of humor; for a subject which will not bear raillery is suspicious, and a jest which will not bear serious examination is false wit."
Aristotle
"Every tragedy falls into two parts, Complication and Unravelling or Denouement."
Aristotle
"For it is owing to their wonder that men both now begin and at first began to philosophize."
Aristotle
"Those who assert that the mathematical sciences say nothing of the beautiful or the good are in error… The chief forms of beauty are order and symmetry and definiteness, which the mathematical sciences demonstrate in a special degree."
Aristotle
"Time crumbles things; everything grows old under the power of Time and is forgotten through the lapse of Time."
Aristotle
"The laughable is a species of what is disgraceful."
Aristotle
"It is absurd to hold that a man should be ashamed of an inability to defend himself with his limbs, but not ashamed of an inability to defend himself with speech and reason; for the use of rational speech is more distinctive of a human being than the use of his limbs."
Aristotle
"I have gained this by philosophy: that I do without being commanded what others do only from fear of the law."
Aristotle
"The roots of education are bitter, but the fruit is sweet."
Aristotle
"It is their character indeed that makes people who they are. But it is by reason of their actions that they are happy or the reverse."
Aristotle
"All men are mortal. Socrates is a man. Therefore, Socrates is mortal."
Aristotle
"One swallow does not make a summer, neither does one fine day; similarly, one day or brief time of happiness does not make a person entirely happy."
Aristotle
"Perfect friendship is the friendship of men who are good, and alike in excellence."
Aristotle
"The good man ought to be Self-loving: because by doing what is noble he will have advantage himself and will do good to others."
Aristotle
"Everything that depends on the action of nature is by nature as good as it can be."
Aristotle
"One must learn by doing the thing, for though you think you know it, you have no certainty until you try."
Aristotle
"A friend is a second self, so that our consciousness of a friend’s existence…makes us more fully conscious of our own existence."
Aristotle
"Inferiors revolt in order that they may be equal and equals that they may be superior. Such is the state of mind which creates revolutions."
Aristotle
"In poverty and other misfortunes of life, true friends are a sure refuge. The young they keep out of mischief; to the old they are a comfort and aid in their weakness, and those in the prime of life they incite to noble deeds."
Aristotle
"That judges of important causes should hold office for life is a disputable thing, for the mind grows old as well as the body."
Aristotle
"Men acquire a particular quality by constantly acting a particular way… you become just by performing just actions, temperate by performing temperate actions, brave by performing brave actions."
Aristotle
"Distance does not break off the friendship absolutely, but only the activity of it."
Aristotle
"Proverbs are the remnants of old philosophy preserved due to their brevity and smartness."
Aristotle
"The pleasures arising from thinking and learning will make us think and learn all the more."
Aristotle
"When people are friends, they have no need of justice, but when they are just, they do need friendship in addition; and in the realm of the just things, the most just seems to be what involves friendship."
Aristotle
"We must no more ask whether the soul and body are one than ask whether the wax and the figure impressed on it are one."
Aristotle
"The cultivation of the intellect is man’s highest good and purest happiness."
Aristotle
"Piety requires us to honor truth above our friends."
Aristotle
"Men create gods after their own image, not only with regard to their form but with regard to their mode of life."
Aristotle
"We learn an art or craft by doing the things that we shall have to do when we have learnt it."
Aristotle
"Friendship is essentially a partnership."
Aristotle
"The virtue of justice consists in moderation, as regulated by wisdom."
Aristotle
"Knowledge of the fact differs from knowledge of the reason for the fact."
Aristotle
"The more you know, the more you know you don’t know."
Aristotle
"The wise man does not expose himself needlessly to danger, since there are few things for which he cares sufficiently; but he is willing, in great crises, to give even his life – knowing that under certain conditions it is not worthwhile to live."
Aristotle
"The deficiencies of nature are what art and education seek to fill up."
Aristotle
"Habit is second nature."
Aristotle
"Those who excel in virtue have the best right of all to rebel, but then they are of all men the least inclined to do so."
Aristotle
"Learning is not child’s play; we cannot learn without pain."
Aristotle
"Bashfulness is an ornament to youth, but a reproach to old age."
Aristotle
"Education needs these three: natural endowment, study, practice."
Aristotle

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