Famous Quotes by Aristotle

  • Anger is always concerned with individuals, ... whereas hatred is directed also against classes:... More
  • Jealousy is both reasonable and belongs to reasonable men, while envy is base and belongs to the... More
  • Young men have strong passions and tend to gratify them indiscriminately. Of the bodily desires,... More
  • Good habits formed at youth make all the difference. More
  • Plato is dear to me, but dearer still is truth. More
  • God and nature do nothing in vain. More
  • Everything necessarily is or is not, and will be or will not be; but one cannot divide and say... More
  • No great genius has ever existed without some touch of madness. More
  • In all cases, excepting those of the bear and leopard, the female is less spirited than the male;... More
  • All men by nature desire knowledge. More
  • All men by nature desire to know. More
  • For it is owing to their wonder that men both now begin and at first began to philosophize....... More
  • The investigation of the truth is in one way hard, in another easy. An indication of this is... More
  • For as the eyes of bats are to the blaze of day, so is the reason in our soul to the things which... More
  • Every art and every inquiry, and similarly every action and choice, is thought to aim at some... More
  • Our discussion will be adequate; if it has as much clearness as the subject-matter admits of; for... More
  • But then in what way are things called good? They do not seem to be like the things that only... More
  • For one swallow does not make a summer, nor does one day; and so too one day, or a short time,... More
  • Hence a young man is not a proper hearer of lectures on political science; for he is... More
  • Excellence, then, is a state concerned with choice, lying in a mean, relative to us, this being... More
  • We make war that we may live in peace. More
  • For though we love both the truth and our friends, piety requires us to honor the truth first. More
  • The Good of man is the active exercise of his soul’s faculties in conformity with excellence or... More
  • If happiness, then, is activity expressing virtue, it is reasonable for it to express the supreme... More
  • The generality of men are naturally apt to be swayed by fear rather than reverence, and to... More
  • It is the mark of an educated man to look for precision in each class of things just so far as... More
  • A young man is not a proper hearer of lectures on political science; for he is inexperienced in... More
  • The life of mind is best and pleasantest for man, since mind more than anything else is man. This... More
  • Excellence or virtue is a settled disposition of the mind that determines our choice of actions... More
  • Temperance is a mean with regard to pleasures. More
  • Courage is a mean with regard to fear and confidence. More
  • One kind of justice is that which is manifested in distributions of honour or money or the other... More
  • What we know is not capable of being otherwise; of things capable of being otherwise we do not... More
  • Art is identical with a state of capacity to make, involving a true course of reasoning. All art... More
  • Perfect friendship is the friendship of men who are good, and alike in excellence; for these wish... More
  • A human being is a naturally political [animal]. More
  • If thinking is like perceiving, it must be either a process in which the soul is acted upon by... More
  • Generally, about all perception, we can say that a sense is what has the power of receiving into... More
  • So, if we must give a general formula applicable to all kinds of soul, we must describe it as the... More
  • A sense is what has the power of receiving into itself the sensible forms of things without the... More
  • Something is infinite if, taking it quantity by quantity, we can always take something outside. More
  • Beauty depends on size as well as symmetry. No very small animal can be beautiful, for looking at... More
  • A tragedy is a representation of an action that is whole and complete and of a certain... More
  • A poet’s object is not to tell what actually happened but what could or would happen either... More
  • Hence poetry is something more philosophic and of graver import than history, since its... More
  • The most perfect political community must be amongst those who are in the middle rank, and those... More
  • It is the nature of our desires to be boundless, and many live only to gratify them. But for this... More
  • Nor was civil society founded merely to preserve the lives of its members; but that they might... More
  • So it is naturally with the male and the female; the one is superior, the other inferior; the one... More
  • Man is by nature a political animal. More
  • For as the interposition of a rivulet, however small, will occasion the line of the phalanx to... More
  • Inferiors revolt in order that they may be equal, and equals that they may be superior. Such is... More
  • Nature does nothing in vain. More
  • Man is naturally a political animal. More
  • The beginning of reform is not so much to equalize property as to train the noble sort of natures... More
  • Whosoever is delighted in solitude is either a wild beast or a god. More
  • Every community is an association of some kind and every community is established with a view to... More
  • The state is a creation of nature and man is by nature a political animal. More
  • He who can be, and therefore is, another’s, and he who participates in reason enough to... More
  • A constitution is the arrangement of magistracies in a state. More
  • The government, which is the supreme authority in states, must be in the hands of one, or of a... More
  • The legislator should direct his attention above all to the education of youth; for the neglect... More
  • It is clearly better that property should be private, but the use of it common; and the special... More
  • Governments which have a regard to the common interest are constituted in accordance with strict... More
  • To the query, “What is a friend?” his reply was “A single soul dwelling in two bodies.” More
  • Rhetoric may be defined as the faculty of observing in any given case the available means of... More
  • Of the modes of persuasion furnished by the spoken word there are three kinds. The first kind... More
  • In making a speech one must study three points: first, the means of producing persuasion; second,... More
  • Wit is educated insolence. More
  • The moral virtues, then, are produced in us neither by nature nor against nature. Nature, indeed,... More
  • What the statesman is most anxious to produce is a certain moral character in his fellow... More
  • We praise a man who feels angry on the right grounds and against the right persons and also in... More

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