Top 100 Aristotle's Quotes
#1. It is astonishing to realize that until Galileo performed his experiments on the acceleration of gravity in the early seventeenth century, nobody questioned Aristotle's falling balls. Nobody said, Show Me!
Neil DeGrasse Tyson
#2. It is doubtless one of Aristotle's great services that he conceived so clearly the truth that literature is a thing that grows and has a history.
Gilbert Murray
#3. Aristotle's scala naturae, which runs from God, the angels, and humans at the top, downward to other mammals, birds, fish, insects, and mollusks at the bottom.
Frans De Waal
#4. The usual derivation of the word Metaphysics is not to be sustainedthe science is supposed to take its name from its superiority to physics. The truth is, that Aristotle's treatise on Morals is next in succession to his Book of Physics.
Edgar Allan Poe
#5. Aristotle's axiom: The worst form of inequality is to try to make unequal things equal.
Laurence J. Peter
#6. Some of you read with me 40 years ago a portion of Aristotle's Ethics, a selection of passages that describe his idea of happiness. You may not remember too well.
Charles Van Doren
#7. The brilliancy of Aristotle's genius is shown by this alone, that he discovered, in the expression of the value of commodities, a relation of equality. The peculiar conditions of the society in which he lived, alone prevented him from discovering what, "in truth," was at the bottom of this equality.
Karl Marx
#8. The world of conceptualized ideas is quite wonderful, even when it's - like Aristotle's Physics - an outmoded book. The physics is not true. But the reasoning is dazzling.
William H Gass
#9. Yet Aristotle's excellence of substance, so far from being associated with the grand style, is associated with something that at times comes perilously near jargon.
Irving Babbitt
#10. My metaphysical thinking is more in alignment with Plato rather than Aristotle's."
~R. Alan Woods [2013]
R. Alan Woods
#11. Again what city ever received Plato's or Aristotle's laws, or Socrates' precepts? But,
Erasmus
#12. Daybreak. Pope Pius II watches a fiery orb crest the Tiber. His mind drifts. He recalls that Aristotle's student Callippus once computed the seasons' duration, measuring the sun's movement within its ethereal sphere.
David Beckett
#13. A line is not made up of points ... In the same way, time is not made up parts considered as indivisible 'nows.' Part of Aristotle's reply to Zeno's paradox concerning continuity.
Aristotle.
#14. Aristotle's metaphysics, roughly speaking, may be described as Plato diluted by common sense. He is difficult because Plato and common sense do not mix easily.
Bertrand Russell
#15. (For those who like to quote Aristotle's wisdom when appealing to his "Prime Mover" argument for the existence of God, let us remember that he also claimed that women had a different number of teeth than men, presumably without bothering to check.) Everything
Lawrence M. Krauss
#16. But Aristotle's philosophy was the intellect's Declaration of Independence.
Ayn Rand
#18. What was Aristotle's life?' Well, the answer lay in a single sentence: 'He was born, he thought, he died.' And all the rest is pure anecdote.
Martin Heidegger
#19. The rules are all in a sixty-four-page pamphlet by Aristotle called 'Poetics.' It was written almost three thousand years ago, but I promise you, if something is wrong with what you're writing, you've probably broken one of Aristotle's rules.
Aaron Sorkin
#20. He came down from the North to Paris with a mind like Aristotle's and a form like mortal sin. We shattered the Commandments on the spot.
James Goldman
#21. To judge therefore of Shakespeare by Aristotle's rule is like trying a man by the Laws of one Country who acted under those of another.
Elizabeth Montagu
#22. The Greeks had had no clear notion of it. For them the future had been indeterminable. In Aristotle's teaching, a man could never say for certain if there would be a sea battle tomorrow.
Jhumpa Lahiri
#23. If there must be a god in the house, must be,
Saying things in the rooms and on the stair,
Let him move as the sunlight moves on the floor,
Or moonlight, silently, as Plato's ghost
Or Aristotle's skeleton. Let him hang out
His stars on the wall. He must dwell quietly.
Wallace Stevens
#24. I shall never be persuaded that God hath shut up all light of learning within the lantern of Aristotle's brain.
Walter Raleigh
#25. I've been deeply influenced by Aristotle's idea that virtue is a habit, something you practice and get better at, rather than something that comes naturally. 'The control of the appetites by right reason,' is how he defined it.
Tim O'Reilly
#26. The world is an astonishing place, and the idea that we have in our possession the basic tools needed to understand it is no more credible now than it was in Aristotle's day.
Thomas Nagel
#27. The intimate and the infinite are tangled together in this incandescent book, lit by Aristotle's bright spark of a daughter. Lucid even in nightmare, The Sweet Girl slips sideways around the philosopher to examine the lives of girls and women when we were not yet human.
Marina Endicott
#28. Nothing seems to me more doubtful than Aristotle's remark that it is probable the arts and philosophy have several times been discovered and several times lost.
Julien Benda
#30. Happiness does not lie in amusement; it would be strange if one were to take trouble and suffer hardship all one's life in order to amuse oneself
Aristotle.
#31. [I]n speaking about someone's character, we do not say that he is wise or comprehending, but that he is gentle or moderate.
Aristotle.
#32. Happiness is a quality of the soul ... not a function of one's material circumstances.
Aristotle.
#33. Aristotle was the first accurate critic and truest judge nay, the greatest philosopher the world ever had; for he noted the vices of all knowledges, in all creatures, and out of many men's perfections in a science he formed still one Art.
Ben Jonson
#34. It is our actions and the soul's active exercise of its functions that we posit (as being Happiness);
Aristotle.
#35. For Aristotle, it's not enough simply to act in accordance with the reason once in a while. We must cultivate habits of virtue that develop into a firmly established moral character over a lifetime.
John Mark Reynolds
#36. The cultivation of the intellect is man's highest good and purest happiness
Aristotle.
#38. Man is a political animal' said Aristotle telling one of the greatest lies in human history. For every man has more in common with the hills and with the stars than with other men.
William S. Burroughs
#39. I can't speak for Aeschylus or Epictetus or Aristotle. But I am convinced of this: they would have hated having their wisdom confined to classrooms and textbooks. This is wisdom about how to live. And it's your property as much as anyone's. It is yours. Take it. Use it.
Eric Greitens
#40. Those whose days are consumed in the low pursuits of avarice, or the gaudy frivolties of fashion, unobservant of nature's lovelinessof demarcation, nor on which side thereof an intermediate form should lie.
Aristotle.
#41. A person's life persuades better than his word.
Aristotle.
#42. My father nodded. 'Ari, the problem isn't just that Dante's in love with you. The real problem
for you anyway
is that you're in love with him.
Benjamin Alire Saenz
#43. Catharsis. Revenge cleanses. Aristotle wrote that the human soul is purged by the fear and compassion that tragedy evokes. It's a frightening thought that we fulfil the soul's innermost desire through the tragedy of revenge, isn't it.
Jo Nesbo
#44. A poet's object is not to tell what actually happened but what could or would happen either probably or inevitably ... For this reason poetry is something more scientific and serious than history, because poetry tends to give general truths while history gives particular facts.
Aristotle.
#45. A man's happiness consists in the free exercise of his highest faculties.
Aristotle.
#46. Justice is the loveliest and health is the best, but the sweetest to obtain is the heart's desire.
Aristotle.
#47. It's a philosophical minefield!
Cabal had a brief mental image of Aristotle walking halfway across an open field before unexpectedly disappearing in a fireball. Descartes and Nietzsche looked on appalled. He pulled himself together.
Jonathan L. Howard
#48. It's the fastest who gets paid, and it's the fastest who gets laid.
Aristotle.
#49. No matter what Aristotle and the Philosophers say, nothing is equal to tobacco; it's the passion of the well-bred, and he who lives without tobacco lives a life not worth living.
Moliere
#50. He was not only the last of the great Greek philosophers, he was Europe's first great biologist.
Jostein Gaarder
#51. 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.
#52. PERIPATETIC, adj. Walking about. Relating to the philosophy of Aristotle, who, while expounding it, moved from place to place in order to avoid his pupil's objections. A needless precaution - they knew no more of the matter than he.
Ambrose Bierce
#53. He who is by nature not his own but another's man is by nature a slave.
Aristotle.
#54. The family is the association established by nature for the supply of man's everyday wants.
Aristotle.
#55. A human's love. I couldn't wish anything better for him. Animals protect what they know. They protect what they are bound to, but humans ... humans have a greater capacity for sacrifice for those who live in their hearts. (Aristotle)
Sherrilyn Kenyon
#56. For he would rather have at his bed's head Some twenty books, all bound in black and red, Of Aristotle and his philosophy Than rich robes, fiddle, or gay psaltery. ========== Canterbury Tales
Anonymous
#57. Happiness is the utilization of one's talents along lines of excellence.
Aristotle.
#58. It's during our darkest moments that we must focus to see the light.
Aristotle Onassis
#59. Since Socrates and Plato first speculated on the nature of the human mind, serious thinkers through the ages - from Aristotle to Descartes, from Aeschylus to Strindberg and Ingmar Bergman - have thought it wise to understand oneself and one's behavior.
Eric Kandel
#60. Aristotle said 'anyone can become angry, but to be angry with the right person and to the right degree, and at the right time. For the right purpose and in the right way - is not within every man's power.
Elizabeth Hunter
#61. It is no part of a physician's business to use either persuasion or compulsion upon the patients.
Aristotle.
#62. 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.
#63. Art completes what nature cannot bring to finish. The artist gives us knowledge of nature's unrealized ends.
Aristotle.
#64. 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.
#65. To be happy you have to fulfill your nature. That's what Aristotle taught so many centuries ago, that the road to happiness isn't to go drink more or consume more. The road to happiness is to fully develop your abilities, and then apply them to do good.
Charles Koch
#66. Happiness involves engagement in activities that promote one's highest potentials.
Aristotle.
#67. It will contribute towards one's object, who wishes to acquire a facility in the gaining of knowledge, to doubt judiciously.
Aristotle.
#68. C. S. Lewis, Plato, Aristotle and many more names that I could add, including Einstein's, were individuals who were able to see the innate order in life, which others perceive as chaos.
Frederick Lenz
#69. Impatient much?" "Patience is bitter. It's the fruit that's sweet." "Did you just quote Aristotle?" "Maybe.
Vi Keeland
#70. Aristotle, I swear that kid is going to get himself killed one of these days. He's a dumbass at the genetic level.
Gary Ballard
#71. 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.
#72. I have this idea that the reason we have dreams is that we're thinking about things that we don't know we're thinking about-and those things,well,they sneak out of us in our dreams.Maybe we're like tires with too much air in them.The air has to leak out.That's what dreams are.
Benjamin Alire Saenz
#73. Even hackneyed and commonplace maxims are to be used, if they suit one's purpose: just because they are commonplace, every one seems to agree with them, and therefore they are taken for truth.
Aristotle.
#74. Man's best friend is one who wishes well to the object of his wish for his sake, even if no one is to know of it.
Aristotle.
#75. Patience s bitter, but it's fruit is sweet.
Aristotle.
#76. It's fair to say that Wikipedia has spent far more time considering the philosophical ramifications of categorization than Aristotle and Kant ever did.
James Gleick
#77. 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.
#78. Democracy arose from men's thinking that if they are equal in any respect, they are equal absolutely.
Aristotle.
#79. All Earthquakes and Disasters are warnings; there's too much corruption in the world
Aristotle.
#80. Group norms, the researchers on Project Aristotle concluded, were the answer to improving Google's teams. "The data finally started making sense," said Dubey. "We had to manage the how of teams, not the who.
Charles Duhigg
#81. Aristotle may be regarded as the cultural barometer of Western history. Whenever his influence dominated the scene, it paved the way for one of history's brilliant eras; whenever it fell, so did mankind.
Ayn Rand
#82. No space, no time, no gravity, no electromagnetism, no particles. Nothing. We are back where Plato, Aristotle and Parmenides struggled with the great questions: How Come the Universe, How Come Us, How Come Anything? But happily also we have around the answer to these questions. That's us.
John Archibald Wheeler
#83. 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.
#84. Aristotle says that the aim of education is to make the pupil like and dislike what he ought.
C.S. Lewis
#85. Inequality is everywhere at the bottom of faction, for in general faction arises from men's striving for what is equal.
Aristotle.
#86. I knew that a part of him would never be the same. They cracked more than his ribs.
Benjamin Alire Saenz
#87. The best friend is he that, when he wishes a person's good, wishes it for that person's own sake.
Aristotle.
#88. The man is free, we say, who exists for his own sake and not for another's.
Aristotle.
#89. Thomas Aquinas said of suffering, as Aristotle had said of shame, that it was a thing not good in itself; but a thing which might have a certain goodness in particular circumstances. That is to say, if evil is present, pain at recognition of the evil, being a kind of knowledge, is relatively good.
C.S. Lewis
#90. To a recognizably Christian culture, like Shakespeare's, Jesus Christ is the Logos incarnate, the Word made flesh. He exemplifies the good of having a body. In the long run, that is why Aquinas could baptize Aristotle and why the West could produce Shakespeare and Michelangelo.
William Shakespeare
#91. Anaximenes and Anaxagoras and Democritus say that its [the earth's] flatness is responsible for it staying still: for it does not cut the air beneath but covers it like a lid, which flat bodies evidently do: for they are hard to move even for the winds, on account of their resistance.
Aristotle.
#92. Cicero called Aristotle a river of flowing gold, and said of Plato's Dialogues, that if Jupiter were to speak, it would be in language like theirs.
Plutarch
#93. Walking is magic. Can't recommend it highly enough. I read that Plato and Aristotle did much of their brilliant thinking together while ambulating. The movement, the meditation, the health of the blood pumping, and the rhythm of footsteps ... this is a primal way to connect with one's deeper self.
Paula Cole
#94. 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.
#95. After reading the doctrines of Plato, Socrates or Aristotle, we feel the specific difference between their words and Christ's is the difference between an inquiry and a revelation.
Joseph Parker
#96. Quality is not an an act, it's a habit.
Aristotle.
#97. [Meanness] is more ingrained in man's nature than Prodigality; the mass of mankind are avaricious rather than open-handed.
Aristotle.
#98. Humility is a flower which does not grow in everyone's garden.
Aristotle.
#99. Maybe crying is a means of cleaning yourself out emotionally. Or maybe it's your last resort; the only way to express yourself when words fail, the same as when you were a baby and had no words.
Aristotle.
#100. To give away money is an easy matter and in any man's power. But to decide to whom to give it and how large and when, and for what purpose and how, is neither in every man's power nor an easy matter.
Aristotle.
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