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People become house builders through building houses, harp players through playing the harp. We grow to be just by doing things which are just.
Aristotle -
In a polity, each citizen is to possess his own arms, which are not supplied or owned by the state.
Aristotle
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He then alone will strictly be called brave who is fearless of a noble death, and of all such chances as come upon us with sudden death in their train.
Aristotle -
Comedy has had no history, because it was not at first treated seriously.
Aristotle -
Since we think we understand when we know the explanation, and there are four types of explanation (one, what it is to be a thing; one, that if certain things hold it is necessary that this does; another, what initiated the change; and fourth, the aim), all these are proved through the middle term.
Aristotle -
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 -
It is clear that there is some difference between ends: some ends are energeia, while others are products which are additional to the energeia.
Aristotle -
Most persons think that a state in order to be happy ought to be large; but even if they are right, they have no idea of what is a large and what a small state.... To the size of states there is a limit, as there is to other things, plants, animals, implements; for none of these retain their natural power when they are too large or too small, but they either wholly lose their nature, or are spoiled.
Aristotle
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Now the goodness that we have to consider is clearly human goodness, since the good or happiness which we set out to seek was human good and human happiness. But human goodness means in our view excellence of soul, not excellence of body.
Aristotle -
But a man's best friend is the one who not only wishes him well but wishes it for his own sak: and this condition is best fulfilled by his attitude towards himself - and similarly with all the other attributes that go to define a friend. For we have said before that all friendly feelings for others are extensions of a man's feelings for himself.
Aristotle -
But since there is but one aim for the entire state, it follows that education must be one and the same for all, and that the responsibility for it must be a public one, not the private affair which it now is, each man looking after his own children and teaching them privately whatever private curriculum he thinks they ought to study.
Aristotle -
Men create gods after their own image, not only with regard to their form but with regard to their mode of life.
Aristotle -
If what was said in the Ethics is true, that the happy life is the life according to virtue lived without impediment, and that virtue is a mean, then the life which is in a mean, and in a mean attainable by every one, must be the best. And the same principles of virtue and vice are characteristic of cities and of constitutions; for the constitution is in a figure the life of the city.
Aristotle -
Philosophy can make people sick.
Aristotle
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The most beautiful colors laid on at random, give less pleasure than a black-and-white drawing.
Aristotle -
The virtue of the good man is necessarily the same as the virtue of the citizen of the perfect state.
Aristotle -
A life of wealth and many belongings is only a means to happiness. Honor, power, and success cannot be happiness because they depend on the whims of others, and happiness should be self-contained, complete in itself.
Aristotle -
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 -
If we state the function of man to be a certain kind of life, and this to be an activity or actions of the soul implying a rational principle, and the function of a good man to be the good and noble performance of these, and if any action is well performed when it is performed in accordance with the appropriate excellence human good turns out to be activity of the soul in accordance with virtue, and if there are more than one virtue, in accordance with the best and most complete.
Aristotle -
It is the repeated performance of just and temperate actions that produces virtue.
Aristotle
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Some things the legislator must find ready to his hand in a state, others he must provide. And therefore we can only say: May our state be constituted in such a manner as to be blessed with the goods of which fortune disposes: whereas virtue and goodness in the state are not a matter of chance but the result of knowledge and purpose. A city can be virtuous only when the citizens who have a share in the government are virtuous, and in our state all the citizens share in the government.
Aristotle