Top 100 Aristotle. Quotes
#1. Knowledge of the fact differs from knowledge of the reason for the fact.
Aristotle.
#2. There is nothing unequal as the equal treatment of unequals.
Aristotle.
#3. The state or political community, which is the highest of all, and which embraces all the rest, aims at good in a greater degree than any other, and at the highest good.
Aristotle.
#4. It is clear that there is some difference between ends: some ends are energeia [energy], while others are products which are additional to the energeia.
Aristotle.
#6. The coward calls the brave man rash, the rash man calls him a coward.
Aristotle.
#7. Now each man judges well the things he knows, and of these he is a good judge. And so the man who has been educated in a subject is a good judge of that subject, and the man who has received an all-round education is a good judge in general.
Aristotle.
#8. Think as wise men do, but speak as the common people do.
Aristotle.
#9. It is more difficult to organize a peace than to win a war; but the fruits of victory will be lost if the peace is not organized.
Aristotle.
#10. Beauty depends on size as well as symmetry. No very small animal can be beautiful, for looking at it takes so small a portion of time that the impression of it will be confused. Nor can any very large one, for a whole view of it cannot be had at once, and so there will be no unity and completeness.
Aristotle.
#11. The government is everywhere sovereign in the state, and the constitution is in fact the government.
Aristotle.
#12. Moral virtue is the quality of acting in the best way in relation to pleasures and pains, and that vice is the opposite.
Aristotle.
#13. Misfortune shows those who are not really friends.
Aristotle.
#14. We become brave by doing brave acts.
Aristotle.
#15. What you have to learn to do, you learn by doing.
Aristotle.
#16. We praise a man who feels angry on the right grounds and against the right persons and also in the right manner at the right moment and for the right length of time.
Aristotle.
#17. Hence, in a constitutional government the fighting-men have the supreme power, and those who possess arms are the citizens
Aristotle.
#18. 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.
#19. For the lesser evil is reckoned a good in comparison with the greater evil, since the lesser evil is rather to be chosen than the greater.
Aristotle.
#20. We must as second best, as people say, take the least of the evils.
Aristotle.
#21. To avoid criticism say nothing, do nothing, be nothing.
Aristotle.
#24. Freedom is obedience to self-formulated rules.
Aristotle.
#25. In justice is all virtues found in sum.
Aristotle.
#26. Wonder implies the desire to learn.
Aristotle.
#27. Greatness of spirit is accompanied by simplicity and sincerity.
Aristotle.
#28. Let us be well persuaded that everyone of us possesses happiness in proportion to his virtue and wisdom, and according as he acts in obedience to their suggestion.
Aristotle.
#29. Shame is an ornament to the young; a disgrace to the old.
Aristotle.
#30. The greatest victory is over self.
Aristotle.
#31. Without virtue, man is most unholy and savage, and worst in regard to sex and eating.
Aristotle.
#32. Some [jests] are becoming to a gentleman, others are not; see that you choose such as become you. Irony better befits a gentleman than buffoonery; the ironical man jokes to amuse himself, the buffoon to amuse other people.
Aristotle.
#33. In general, then, pleasure is not good, because every pleasure is a perceptible process of coming into its nature; but no coming-into-being belongs to the same class as the ends we pursue - for
Aristotle.
#34. There must then be a principle of such a kind that its substance is activity.
Aristotle.
#35. In practical matters the end is not mere speculative knowledge of what is to be done, but rather the doing of it. It is not enough to know about Virtue, then, but we must endeavor to possess it, and to use it, or to take any other steps that may make.
Aristotle.
#36. When you are lonely, when you feel yourself an alien in the world, play Chess. This will raise your spirits and be your counselor in war
Aristotle.
#37. The Life of the intellect is the best and pleasantest for man, because the intellect more than anything else is the man. Thus it will be the happiest life as well.
Aristotle.
#38. The laughable is a species of what is disgraceful.
Aristotle.
#39. Goodness is to do good to the deserving and love the good and hate the wicked, and not to be eager to inflict punishment or take vengeance, but to be gracious and kindly and forgiving.
Aristotle.
#40. Not every action or emotion however admits of the observance of a due mean
Aristotle.
#41. At the intersection where your gifts, talents, and abilities meet a human need; therein you will discover your purpose
Aristotle.
#42. How can a man who, for a significant phase of his formation, shared his master's opposition to rhetoric have in maturity composed a masterpiece of the formal study of rhetoric? This
Aristotle.
#43. We are what we repeatively do. Success is not an action but a habit.
Aristotle.
#44. Prudence as well as Moral Virtue determines the complete performance of a man's proper function: Virtue ensures the rightness of the end we aim at, Prudence ensures the rightness of the means we adopt to gain that end.
Aristotle.
#45. We have next to consider the formal definition of virtue.
Aristotle.
#46. We acquire a particular quality by acting in a particular way.
Aristotle.
#47. The use of music for intellectual enjoyment in leisure;
Aristotle.
#48. Happiness, therefore, being found to be something final; and self-sufficient, is the end at which all actions aim.
Aristotle.
#49. Where it is in our power to act, it is also in our power to not act.
Aristotle.
#50. No one chooses what does not rest with himself, but only what he thinks can be attained by his own act.
Aristotle.
#51. A thing chosen always as an end and never as a means we call absolutely final. Now happiness above all else appears to be absolutely final in this sense, since we always choose it for its own sake and never as a means to something else.
Aristotle.
#52. They who love in excess also hate in excess.
Aristotle.
#53. Men ought not to labor at the same time with their minds and with their bodies; for the two kinds of labor are opposed to one another; the labor of the body impedes the mind, and the labor of the mind the body.
Aristotle.
#54. The greatest crimes are caused by surfeit, not by want.
Aristotle.
#55. The same things are best both for individuals and for states, and these are the things which the legislator ought to implant in the minds of his citizens.
Aristotle.
#56. Nature does nothing without a purpose. In children may be observed the traces and seeds of what will one day be settled psychological habits, though psychologically a child hardly differs for the time being from an animal.
Aristotle.
#57. It makes no difference whether a good man has defrauded a bad man, or a bad man defrauded a good man, or whether a good or bad man has committed adultery: the law can look only to the amount of damage done.
Aristotle.
#58. Love is the cause of unity in all things.
Aristotle.
#59. Our virtues are voluntary (and in fact we are in a sense ourselves partly the cause of our moral dispositions, and it is our having a certain character that makes us set up an end of a certain kind), it follows that our vices are voluntary also; they are voluntary in the same manner as our virtues.
Aristotle.
#60. The attainment of truth is then the function of both the intellectual parts of the soul. Therefore their respective virtues are those dispositions which will best qualify them to attain truth.
Aristotle.
#61. There is also a doubt as to what is to be the supreme power in the state: - Is it the multitude? Or the wealthy? Or the good? Or the one best man? Or a tyrant?
Aristotle.
#62. Those who inquire into the number of existents: for they inquire whether the ultimate constituents of existing things are one or many, and if many, whether a finite or an infinite plurality.
Aristotle.
#63. Happiness also requires external goods in addition.
Aristotle.
#64. He who is a citizen in a democracy will often not be a citizen in an oligarchy.
Aristotle.
#65. The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance.
Aristotle.
#67. You will never do anything in this world without courage. It is the greatest quality of the mind next to honor.
Aristotle.
#68. For nature by the same cause, provided it remain in the same condition, always produces the same effect, so that either coming-to-be or passing-away will always result.
Aristotle.
#69. As the pleasures of the body are the ones which we most often meet with, and as all men are capable of these, these have usurped the family title; and some men think these are the only pleasures that exist, because they are the only ones which they know.
Aristotle.
#70. When people are friends, they have no need of justice, but when they are just, they need friendship in addition.
Aristotle.
#71. In all things which have a plurality of parts, and which are not a total aggregate but a whole of some sort distinct from the parts, there is some cause.
Aristotle.
#72. A good man may make the best even of poverty and disease, and the other ills of life; but he can only attain happiness under the opposite conditions
Aristotle.
#74. If happiness is activity in accordance with excellence, it is reasonable that it should be in accordance with the highest excellence.
Aristotle.
#75. Wise men speak when they have something to say, fools speak because they have to say something
Aristotle.
#76. A science must deal with a subject and its properties.
Aristotle.
#77. Life is only meaningful when we are striving for a goal .
Aristotle.
#78. We, on the other hand, must take for granted that the things that exist by nature are, either all or some of them, in motion.
Aristotle.
#79. Where the laws are not authoritative demagogues arise. For the populace becomes a monarch when it turns from many into a single composite, since the many are in authority not as particular persons but all together.
Aristotle.
#80. Law is order, and good law is good order.
Aristotle.
#81. The energy or active exercise of the mind constitutes life.
Aristotle.
#82. Money originated with royalty and slavery, it has nothing to do with democracy or the struggle of the empoverished enslaved majority.
Aristotle.
#83. Our first presupposition must be that in nature nothing acts on, or is acted on by, any other thing at random, nor may anything come from anything else, unless we mean that it does so in virtue of a concomitant attribute.
Aristotle.
#84. Emotions of any kind can be evoked by melody and rhythm; therefore music has the power to form character.
Aristotle.
#85. The trade of the petty usurer is hated with most reason: it makes a profit from currency itself, instead of making it from the process which currency was meant to serve. Their common characteristic is obviously their sordid avarice.
Aristotle.
#86. In the human species at all events there is a great diversity of pleasures. The same things delight some men and annoy others, and things painful and disgusting to some are pleasant and attractive to others.
Aristotle.
#87. When Pleasure is at the bar the jury is not impartial.
Aristotle.
#88. A very populous city can rarely, if ever, be well governed.
Aristotle.
#89. No science ever defends its first principles.
Aristotle.
#90. The body is at its best between the ages of thirty and thirty-five.
Aristotle.
#91. Poetry demands a man with a special gift for it, or else one with a touch of madness in him.
Aristotle.
#92. If it is better to be happy as a result of one's own exertions than by the gift of fortune, it is reasonable to suppose that this is how happiness is won.
Aristotle.
#93. The word is a sign or symbol of the impressions or affections of the soul.
Aristotle.
#94. He who is to be a good ruler must have first been ruled
Aristotle.
#95. The virtue as the art consecrates itself constantly to what's difficult to do, and the harder the task, the shinier the success.
Aristotle.
#96. I have gained this by philosophy ... I do without being ordered what some are constrained to do by their fear of the law.
Aristotle.
#97. Happiness is a certain activity of soul in conformity with perfect goodness
Aristotle.
#98. The present work is, then, the masterpiece of one particular literary genre that flourished in the fourth century BC in Greece, that of the rhetorical manual, and it is a remarkable fact that it should have fallen to Aristotle to write it. It
Aristotle.
#99. Not in depraved things,
but in those well oriented according to nature,
are we to consider what is natural.
Aristotle.
#100. If you prove the cause, you at once prove the effect; and conversely nothing can exist without its cause.
Aristotle.
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