Quotes About Aristotle

#1. Criticism is something we can avoid easily by saying nothing, doing nothing, and being nothing. - Aristotle

Danielle LaPorte

#2. There are, then, these three means of effecting persuasion. The man who is to be in command of them must, it is clear, be able (1) to reason logically, (2) to understand human character and goodness in their various forms, and (3) to understand the emotions-that is, to name them and

Aristotle.

#3. Now the soul of man is divided into two parts, one of which has a rational principle in itself, and the other, not having a rational principle in itself, is able to obey such a principle. And we call a man in any way good because he has the virtues of these two parts.

Aristotle.

#4. Sometimes Aristotle analyses his terms, but very often he takes them for granted; and in the latter case, I think, he is sometimes deceived by them.

Gilbert Murray

#5. We ought, so far as it lies within our power, to aspire to immortality, and do all that we can to live in conformity with the highest that is within us; for even if it is small in quantity, in power and preciousness, it far excels all the rest.

Aristotle.

#6. The ideal Government of all reflective men, from Aristotle onward, is one which lets the individual alone - one which barely escapes being no government at all.

H.L. Mencken

#7. Happiness then is the best, noblest, and most pleasant thing in the world, and these attributes are not severed as in the inscription at Delos-
Most noble is that which is justest, and best is health;
But pleasantest is it to win what we love.

Aristotle.

#8. The Eyes are the organs of temptation, and the Ears are the organs of instruction.

Aristotle.

#9. A state is an association of similar persons whose aim is the best life possible. What is best is happiness, and to be happy is an active exercise of virtue and a complete employment of it.

Aristotle.

#10. Even that some people try deceived me many times ... I will not fail to believe that somewhere, someone deserves my trust.

Aristotle.

#11. It is clear that those constitutions which aim at the common good are right, as being in accord with absolute justice; while those which aim only at the good of the rulers are wrong.

Aristotle.

#12. I wished it was raining," he said.
"I don't need the rain," I said. "I need you.

Benjamin Alire Saenz

#13. Rising before daylight is also to be commended; it is a healthy habit, and gives more time for the management of the household as well as for liberal studies.

Aristotle.

#14. Quid quid movetur ab alio movetur(nothing moves without having been moved).

Aristotle.

#15. For desire is like a wild beast, and anger perverts rulers and the very best of men. Hence law is intelligence without appetition.

Aristotle.

#16. 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

#17. 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

#18. History describes what has happened, poetry what might. Hence poetry is something more philosophic and serious than history; for poetry speaks of what is universal, history of what is particular.

Aristotle.

#19. Rhetoric may be defined as the faculty of observing in any given case the available means of persuasion. This is not a function of any other art.

Aristotle.

#20. Happiness seems to depend on leisure, because we work to have leisure, and wage war to live in peace.

Aristotle.

#21. [this element], the seat of the appetites and of desire in general, does in a sense participate in principle, as being amenable and obedient to it

Aristotle.

#22. 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

#23. They should rule who are able to rule best.

Aristotle.

#24. 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.

#25. A friend of everyone is a friend of no one

Aristotle.

#26. Gentleness is the ability to bear reproaches and slights with moderation, and not to embark on revenge quickly, and not to be easily provoked to anger, but be free from bitterness and contentiousness, having tranquility and stability in the spirit.

Aristotle.

#27. Experience has shown that it is difficult, if not impossible, for a populous state to be run by good laws.

Aristotle.

#28. 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.

#29. And even though we have read all the arguments of Plato and Aristotle, we shall never become philosophers if we are unable to make a sound judgement on matters which come up for discussion; in this case what we would seem to have learnt would not be science but history.

Rene Descartes

#30. Conventional dogmas, even if endowed with the authority of an Aristotle - ancient or modern - must be tested vigorously. If they are found wanting, we need not bother with them. But if they are found to be substantially correct, we may not overlook them.

Norman Lamm

#31. Aristotle warned that inequality brought instability, while Plato believed that demagogues exploited free speech to install themselves as tyrants.

Timothy Snyder

#32. Metaphysics is universal and is exclusively concerned with primary substance ... And here we will have the science to study that which is, both in its essence and in the properties which it has.

Aristotle.

#33. The intelligence consists not only in the knowledge but also in the skill to apply the knowledge into practice.

Aristotle.

#34. Friendship is two souls inhabiting one body.

Aristotle.

#35. 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 demonstrative proofs.

Aristotle.

#36. Every great genius has an admixture of madness.

Aristotle.

#37. Civil confusions often spring from trifles but decide great issues.

Aristotle.

#38. [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.

#39. Knowledge of the fact differs from knowledge of the reason for the fact.

Aristotle.

#40. All teaching and all intellectual learning come about from already existing knowledge.

Aristotle.

#41. There is nothing unequal as the equal treatment of unequals.

Aristotle.

#42. The purpose of art is to represent the meaning of things. This represents the true reality, not external aspects.

Aristotle.

#43. Intuition is the source of scientific knowledge.

Aristotle.

#44. Madness is badness of spirit, when one seeks profit from all
sources.

Aristotle.

#45. A poet must be a composer of plots rather than of verses,

Aristotle.

#46. One summer night I fell asleep hoping the world would be different when I woke. In the morning, when I opened my eyes, the world was the same.

Benjamin Alire Saenz

#47. All human happiness or misery takes the form of action; the end for which we live is a certain kind of action.

Aristotle.

#48. 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.

#49. Happiness is a quality of the soul ... not a function of one's material circumstances.

Aristotle.

#50. To seek for utility everywhere is entirely unsuited to men that are great-souled and free.

Aristotle.

#51. 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

#52. Again, the male is by nature superior, and the female inferior; and the one rules, and the other is ruled; this principle, of necessity, extends to all mankind.

Aristotle.

#53. Adoration is made out of a solitary soul occupying two bodies.

Aristotle.

#54. Courage is the first virtue that makes all other virtues possible.

Aristotle.

#55. The greater the length, the more beautiful will the piece be by reason of its size, provided that the whole be perspicuous. (VII)

Aristotle.

#56. Aristotle maintained that women have fewer teeth than men; although he was twice married, it never occurred to him to verify this statement by examining his wives' mouths.

Bertrand Russell

#57. 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

#58. Happiness is activity of soul.

Aristotle.

#59. It is our actions and the soul's active exercise of its functions that we posit (as being Happiness);

Aristotle.

#60. For it is not true, as some treatise-mongers lay down in their systems, of the probity of the speaker, that it contributes nothing to persuasion; but moral character nearly, I may say, carries with it the most sovereign efficacy in making credible.

Aristotle.

#61. If every tool, when ordered, or even of its own accord, could do the work that befits it ... then there would be no need either of apprentices for the master workers or of slaves for the lords.

Aristotle.

#62. A courageous person is one who faces fearful things as he ought and as reason directs for the sake of what is noble.

Aristotle.

#63. How can a man know what is good or best for him, and yet chronically fail to act upon his knowledge?

Aristotle.

#64. For he who lives as passion directs will not hear argument that dissuades him, nor understand it if he does; and how can we persuade one in such a state to change his ways?

Aristotle.

#65. To attain any assured knowledge about the soul is one of the most difficult things in the world.

Aristotle.

#66. It is the mark of an educated man to be able to evaluate a thought without accepting it. ARISTOTLE

Paul Pearsall

#67. It [Justice] is complete virtue in the fullest sense, because it is the active exercise of complete virtue; and it is complete because its possessor can exercise it in relation to another person, and not only by himself.

Aristotle.

#68. To leave the number of births unrestricted, as is done in most states, inevitably causes poverty among the citizens, and poverty produces crime and faction.

Aristotle.

#69. Neither old people nor sour people seem to make friends easily; for there is little that is pleasant in them ...

Aristotle.

#70. I paraphrase Aristotle: If you want to be comical, write about people to whom the audience can feel superior; if you want to be tragical, write about at least one person to whom the audience is bound to feel inferior, and no fair having human problems solved by dumb luck or heavenly intervention.

Kurt Vonnegut

#71. Beauty is the gift of God

Aristotle.

#72. 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

#73. The fact that it took the rise of democracies and otherwise open societies at Athens and elsewhere to create the climate in which public eloquence became a political indispensability.

Aristotle.

#74. Even when the laws have been written down, they ought not always remain unchanged.

Aristotle.

#75. 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.

#76. As Aristotle said, you have to be an aristocrat or a reactionary to write a good proletarian poem.

Kenneth Rexroth

#77. 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.

#78. A city is composed of different kinds of men; similar people cannot bring a city into existence.

Aristotle.

#79. When liars speak the truth, they are not believed. - ARISTOTLE (384 - 322 BC)

Bradford G. Wheler

#80. Education begins at the level of the learner.

Aristotle.

#81. Aristotle's axiom: The worst form of inequality is to try to make unequal things equal.

Laurence J. Peter

#82. Everyone honors the wise.

Aristotle.

#83. He who takes his fill of every pleasure ... becomes depraved; while he who avoids all pleasures alike ... becomes insensible.

Aristotle.

#84. It is the activity of the intellect that constitutes complete human happiness - provided it be granted a complete span of life, for nothing that belongs to happiness can be incomplete.

Aristotle.

#85. But the whole vital process of the earth takes place so gradually and in periods of time which are so immense compared with the length of our life, that these changes are not observed, and before their course can be recorded from beginning to end whole nations perish and are destroyed.

Aristotle.

#86. Property should be in a certain sense common, but, as a general rule, private; for, when every one has a distinct interest, men will not complain of one another, and they will make more progress, because every one will be attending to his own business.

Aristotle.

#87. Aristotle Onassis rescued me at a moment when my life was engulfed with shadows. He brought me into a world where one could find both happiness and love. We lived through many beautiful experiences together which cannot be forgotten, and for which I will be eternally grateful.

Jackie Kennedy

#88. Happiness depends on ourselves.

Aristotle.

#89. Happiness is the highest good

Aristotle.

#90. Happiness, then, is co-extensive with contemplation, and the more people contemplate, the happier they are; not incidentally, but in virtue of their contemplation, because it is in itself precious. Thus happiness is a form of contemplation.

Aristotle.

#91. Politicians also have no leisure, because they are always aiming at something beyond political life itself, power and glory, or happiness.

Aristotle.

#92. If you were in class with Aristotle, he would probably come up with something like "If it is moving up, it still has some of the force of the hand on the ball." Don't listen to him. He thinks he is a Jedi.

Rhett Allain

#93. Aristotle dines when it seems good to King Philip, but Diogenes when he himself pleases.

Diogenes

#94. Happiness comes from theperfect practice of virtue.

Aristotle.

#95. The whole is more than the sum of its parts.

Aristotle.

#96. Dissimilarity of habit tends more than anything to destroy affection.

Aristotle.

#97. The coward calls the brave man rash, the rash man calls him a coward.

Aristotle.

#98. To call the Form [of the Good] eternal is misleading: that something lasts forever does not render it any the better, any more than long-enduring whiteness is whiter than ephemeral whiteness.

Alasdair MacIntyre

#99. I wasn't big on family gatherings. Too many intimate strangers. I smiled a lot, but really I never knew what to say.

Benjamin Alire Saenz

#100. 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.