Top 100 Quotes About Aristotle
#1. 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
#2. Bacon first taught the world the true method of the study of nature, and rescued science from that barbarism in which the followers of Aristotle, by a too servile imitation of their master.
Thomas Young
#3. The authority of Plato and Aristotle, of Zeno and Epicurus, still reigned in the schools; and their systems, transmitted with blind deference from one generation of disciples to another, precluded every generous attempt to exercise the powers, or enlarge the limits, of the human mind.
Edward Gibbon
#4. There is a paradox in fiction that was first noticed by Aristotle in the Poetics. We are drawn to fiction because fiction gives us pleasure. But most of what is actually in fiction is deeply unpleasant: threat, death, despair, anxiety, Sturm und Drang.
Jonathan Gottschall
#5. [Aristotle] was the most eminent of all the pupils of Plato ... He seceded from Plato while he was still alive; so that they tell a story that [Plato] said, Aristotle has kicked us off, just as chickens do their mother after they have been hatched.
Plato
#6. Facts in our day are not the same as the facts in the time of Aristotle or Thomas Aquinas. But the principles by which these facts are interpreted have not changed, for common sense remains essentially the same throughout the ages.
Fulton J. Sheen
#7. At the dressing table, every woman has a chance to be an artist, and art, as Aristotle said, completes what nature left unfinished.
Sophia Loren
#8. Aristotle thought place should "take precedence of all other things" because place gives order to the world. Casey tells us that Aristotle claimed that place "gives bountiful aegis - active protective support - to what it locates.
Anonymous
#9. Much of human language is said to be fundamentally metaphorical. This is not good news. Metaphor, according to Aristotle, is an intuitive perception of a similarity in dissimilar things. However, what is a similarity? My Juliet is the sun: in what sense? A
Kim Stanley Robinson
#10. He [William Harvey] bid me to goe to the Fountain-head, and read Aristotle, Cicero, Avicenna, and did call the Neoteriques shitt-breeches.
John Aubrey
#11. Aristotle him selfe sayeth, that medicines be no meate to lyue withall.
Roger Ascham
#12. (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
#13. To live alone one must be either a beast or a god, says Aristotle. Leaving out the third case: one must be both - a philosopher.
Friedrich Nietzsche
#14. For Kant one can be both good and stupid; but for Aristotle stupidity of a certain kind precludes goodness.
Alasdair MacIntyre
#15. As far as I'm concerned all theatre is physical. As Aristotle says, you know, theatre is an act and an action, and he didn't mean just the writing of it, he meant that at the centre of any piece there is an action, a physical action.
Simon McBurney
#16. Aristotle was famous for knowing everything. He taught that the brain exists merely to cool the blood and is not involved in the process of thinking. This is true only of certain persons.
Will Cuppy
#17. Aristotle described the Crow as chaste. In some departments of knowledge, Aristotle was too innocent for his own good.
Will Cuppy
#18. Aristotle ... a mere bond-servant to his logic, thereby rendering it contentious ...
Francis Bacon
#19. But Aristotle's philosophy was the intellect's Declaration of Independence.
Ayn Rand
#20. A famous philosopher (either Aristotle or Judith Krantz, I forget who) once said about being a woman in Los Angeles: If you're blonde and beautiful, you're interchangeable. If you're not, you're invisible.
Laura Levine
#21. [Aristotle formal logic thus far (1787)] has not been able to advance a single step, and hence is to all appearances closed and completed.
Immanuel Kant
#22. 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
#23. 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
#24. Aristotle said that friendship is only possible between two virtuous people. Therefore, friendship between us is impossible.
Sylvain Reynard
#25. Citing both the Buddha and Aristotle, Sachs makes the case for a "middle path," a path of moderation and balance between work and non-work (what he calls, quaintly in this day and age, "leisure"), savings and consumption, self-interest and compassion, individualism and citizenship.
Jon Kabat-Zinn
#26. 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
#28. Aristotle once said, To avoid criticism say nothing, do nothing, and be nothing.
Dave Ramsey
#29. How significant is Aristotle? Well, I wouldn't want to exaggerate, so let me put it this way: Abandoning Aristotelianism, as the founders of modern philosophy did, was the single greatest mistake ever made in the entire history of Western thought.
Edward Feser
#30. Socrates became a trendsetter. Other philosophers, including Plato and Aristotle and Gus, quickly followed suit, dropping their last names too. And, for centuries after that there would be countless imitators including oltaire, Michelangelo, and, much later, Cher.
Demetri Martin
#31. Criticism, as it was first instituted by Aristotle, was meant as a standard of judging well.
Samuel Johnson
#32. Balance in life is the key, as Aristotle taught us. Nobody likes a naive Pollyanna, but neither do we like to be around people who are constantly complaining and finding fault.
Mark Skousen
#33. Aristotle says that the aim of education is to make the pupil like and dislike what he ought.
C.S. Lewis
#34. Since the time of Plato and Aristotle philosophers have had an interest in taking note of common fallacies in reasoning.
Randal Marlin
#35. Albertus [Magnus] ... debased the doctrine of Aristotle with the itch of the chemists flowing with the bloody flux of quicksilver and the stench of sulphur.
Georgius Agricola
#36. And were the vision of Democritus to have been adopted by Western civilization, instead of being cast aside for the pale views of Plato and Aristotle, we would be vastly further ahead today, in
Carl Sagan
#37. 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
#38. The fact is that all the important political philosophers and scientists from the great Aristotle on, with the exception of those of the French Enlightenment and Mill, have sided with the powers that be.
Mario Bunge
#39. Because in life, knowledge is only part of the battle. WITHOUT ACTION, KNOWLEDGE IS OFTEN MEANINGLESS. As Aristotle put it, to be excellent we cannot simply think or feel excellent, we must act excellently. Yet the action required to follow through on what we know is often the hardest part.
Shawn Achor
#40. 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
#42. An Aristotle was but the rubbish of an Adam, and Athens but the rudiments of Paradise.
Robert South
#43. Aristotle could have avoided the mistake of thinking that women have fewer teeth than men, by the simple device of asking Mrs. Aristotle to keep her mouth open while he counted.
Bertrand Russell
#44. You could give Aristotle a tutorial. And you could thrill him to the core of his being ... Such is the privilege of living after Newton, Darwin, Einstein, Planck, Watson, Crick and their colleagues.
Richard Dawkins
#45. Aristotle affirms that philosophy did not pass from Greece to Gaul, that is to the Druids, but was received from them.
John Daniel
#46. 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
#47. What I find in Aristotle is mainly a quite dull collection of generalizations, many of which seem impossible to justify in the light of modern knowledge,
Robert M. Pirsig
#48. Others died, but it happened in the past,
The season (as all men know) most favorable for death.
Is it possible that I, subject of Yaqub Almansur,
Must die as roses had to die and Aristotle?
Jorge Luis Borges
#49. That metre itself forms an essential part of all true poetry is a principle which not even the assertions of an Aristotle or the pronouncements of a Plato can disestablish.
H.P. Lovecraft
#50. Oh, if Plato could see me now ! Aristotle, traveler of time!
James Dashner
#51. Aristotle and Plato considered Greeks so innately superior to barbarians that slavery is justified so long as the master is Greek and the slave barbarian.
Bertrand Russell
#52. 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
#53. For millennia, man remained what he was for Aristotle: a living animal with the additional capacity for a political existence; modern man is an animal whose politics places his existence as a living being in question
Michel Foucault
#54. Plato is my friend; Aristotle is my friend, but my greatest friend is truth.
Isaac Newton
#55. A movie can and should have some real dissonance throughout - rage, heartache, tears, conflict, catharsis and all the other elements Aristotle demanded of a good story - but the chord has to be resolved.
Josh Radnor
#56. There is no absolute up or down, as Aristotle taught; no absolute position in space; but the position of a body is relative to that of other bodies. Everywhere there is incessant relative change in position throughout the universe, and the observer is always at the center of things.
Giordano Bruno
#57. Books, as Dryden has aptly termed them, are spectacles to read nature. Aeschylus and Aristotle, Shakespeare and Bacon, are priests who preach and expound the mysteries of man and the universe. They teach us to understand and feel what we see, to decipher and syllable the hieroglyphics of the senses.
Augustus William Hare
#58. 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
Cornel West
#59. If there is an art of living, it is not something that can be taught timelessly. We have lessons to learn from Aristotle et al, for sure, but not if we simply uproot them from their epoch and stamp them into 21st-century soil.
Julian Baggini
#60. Humour is human. Why? Well, because the Philosopher, Aristotle, says so.
Simon Critchley
#61. 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
#62. He that will write well in any tongue, must follow this counsel of Aristotle, to speak as the common people do, to think as wise men do: and so should every man understand him, and the judgment of wise men allow him.
Roger Ascham
#63. For Aristotle, it is not within our power to seek anything else, and thus /all/ acts have for their basic purpose the attainment of happiness or that which is good in itself and not merely as a means to something else.
Robert F. Almeder
#64. 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
#65. I am indebted to my father for living, but to my teacher for living well.
{His teacher was the legendary philosopher Aristotle}
Alexander The Great
#66. 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
#67. Aristotle and Plato are reckoned the respective heads of two schools. A wise man will see that Aristotle platonizes.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
#68. Thus, from admiration of one wise and innocent child, and from a misheard remark, the process that not even Aristotle could codify was triggered.
Where do you get your ideas?
I purposely mishear things.
Harlan Ellison
#69. All human actions have one or more of these seven causes: chance, nature, compulsion, habit, reason, passion, and desire. Aristotle
Christine Zolendz
#70. Anyone can become angry - that is easy. But to be angry with the right person, to the right degree, at the right time, for the right purpose, and in the right way - this is not easy. ARISTOTLE, The Nicomachean Ethics
Daniel Goleman
#71. as Aristotle said, "The soul never thinks without a picture.
John Ortberg
#72. There is only one way to avoid criticism: do nothing, say nothing, and be nothing. Aristotle
Aristotle.
#73. The simplest way of understanding justice is giving people what they deserve. This idea goes back to Aristotle. The real difficulty begins with figuring out who deserves what and why.
Michael Sandel
#74. Medieval illustrations of the mind from the fourteenth century depict memories like snakes feeding into the imagination and, long before this, both Aristotle and Galen described memories not as archives of our lives, but as tools for the imagination.
Claudia Hammond
#76. According to Aristotle, envy is pain for the presence of good things in others, whereas emulation is pain for their absence in us. This is a subtle but critical difference. Unlike envy, which is self-defeating, emulation is a good thing because it makes us take steps towards securing good things.
Neel Burton
#77. Words are wise men's counters, they do but reckon by them: but they are the money of fools, that value them by the authority of an Aristotle, a Cicero, or a Thomas, or any other doctor whatsoever, if but a man.
Thomas Hobbes
#78. The only good thing that we owe to Plato and Aristotle is that they brought forward many arguments which we can use against the heretics. Yet they and other philosophers are now in hell.
Girolamo Savonarola
#79. The insight that peace is the end of war, and that therefore a war is the preparation for peace, is at least as old as Aristotle, and the pretense that the aim of an armament race is to guard the peace is even older, namely as old as the discovery of propaganda lies.
Hannah Arendt
#80. Top-heavy was the ship as a dinnerless student with all Aristotle in his head.
Herman Melville
#81. Eventually, Aristotle appeared among the Greeks. He improved the methods of logic and systematized its problems and details. He assigned to logic its proper place as the first philosophical discipline and the introduction to philosophy. Therefore he is called the First Teacher.
Ibn Khaldun
#82. Live as if you are the Jesus and learn as if you are the Aristotle.
Debasish Mridha
#83. If the average man is made in God's image, then such a man as Beethoven or Aristotle is plainly superior to God ...
H.L. Mencken
#84. So, then, there abide these three, Aristotle, Longinus, and Coleridge.
George Saintsbury
#85. Slavery was regarded by Aristotle as an ordinance of nature, and so probably was it by the slaves themselves in olden time.
Alfred Marshall
#86. 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.
#87. Aristotle said that only two living entities are capable of complete solitude and complete separateness: God and beast. Because of this the most acute form of suffering for human beings is loneliness.
Chris Hedges
#88. [Footnote:] The Chameleon's face reminded Aristotle of a Baboon. Aristotle wasn't much of a looker himself.
Will Cuppy
#89. The 'Renaissance' West Butchered the Rest.
If I had to choose between an erudite Aristotle and an unknown 'soulless' black slave I would choose the latter. The ascendancy of the West was on a heap of bodies of slaves and trampled humanity through colonization
Viktor Vijay Kumar
#90. 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
#91. If I want to know how we learn and remember and represent the world, I will go to psychology and neuroscience. If I want to know where values come from, I will go to evolutionary biology and neuroscience and psychology, just as Aristotle and Hume would have, were they alive.
Patricia Churchland
#92. Aristotle uses a mother's love for her child as the prime example of love or friendship.
Mortimer Adler
#93. I will admit, like Socrates and Aristotle and Plato and some other philosophers, that there are instances where the death penalty would seem appropriate.
Jack Kevorkian
#94. Aristotle was convinced that a trained memory helped the development of logical thought processes.
Janet M. Tavakoli
#95. Aristotle says that metaphor causes the mind to experience itself in the act of making a mistake.
Anne Carson
#96. The Ethics of Aristotle is one half of a single treatise of which his Politics is the other half. Both deal with one and the same subject. This subject is what Aristotle calls in one place the "philosophy of human affairs;" but more frequently Political or Social Science.
Aristotle.
#97. Aristotle deemed courage to be the first virtue, because it makes all the other possible.
Jonathan V. Last
#99. Americans have all these classes that mean they just know odd things, so engineers know about William Blake and poets know about analytical geometry. She probably took one on Aristotle and the politics of gender.
Deborah Meyler
#100. We may have many acquaintances, but we can have but few friends; this made Aristotle say that he that hath many friends hath none.
Samuel Johnson
