Aristotle Quotes
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If some animals are good at hunting and others are suitable for hunting, then the Gods must clearly smile on hunting.
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Plato... introduces two infinities, because both in increase and diminution there appears to be transcendency, and a progression to infinity. Though... he did not use them: for neither is there infinity in numbers by diminution or division; since unity is a minimum: nor by increase; for he extends number as far as to the decad.
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The perversions are as follows: of royalty, tyranny; of aristocracy, oligarchy; of constitutional government, democracy.
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No excellent soul is exempt from a mixture of madness.
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Why is it that all those who have become eminent in philosophy, politics, poetry, or the arts are clearly of an atrabilious temperament and some of them to such an extent as to be affected by diseases caused by black bile?
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It would then be most admirably adapted to the purposes of justice, if laws properly enacted were, as far as circumstances admitted, of themselves to mark out all cases, and to abandon as few as possible to the discretion of the judge.
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If, then, God is always in that good state in which we sometimes are, this compels our wonder; and if in a better this compels it yet more. And God is in a better state. And life also belongs to God; for the actuality of thought is life, and God is that actuality; and God's self-dependent actuality is life most good and eternal.
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There are, then, three states of mind ... two vices − that of excess, and that of defect; and one virtue − the mean; and all these are in a certain sense opposed to one another; for the extremes are not only opposed to the mean, but also to one another; and the mean is opposed to the extremes.
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The line has magnitude in one way, the plane in two ways, and the solid in three ways, and beyond these there is no other magnitude because the three are all.
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But is it just then that the few and the wealthy should be the rulers? And what if they, in like manner, rob and plunder the people, - is this just?
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In making a speech one must study three points: first, the means of producing persuasion; second, the language; third the proper arrangement of the various parts of the speech.
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We may assume the superiority ceteris paribus of the demonstration which derives from fewer postulates or hypotheses - in short, from fewer premises.
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If something's bound to happen, it will happen.. Right time, right erson, and for the best reason.
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He is courageous who endures and fears the right thing, for the right motive, in the right way and at the right times.
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Man is the metre of all things, the hand is the instrument of instruments, and the mind is the form of forms.
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Everything that depends on the action of nature is by nature as good as it can be, and similarly everything that depends on art or any rational cause, and especially if it depends on the best of all causes. To entrust to chance what is greatest and most noble would be a very defective arrangement.
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A constitution is the arrangement of magistracies in a state.
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Those who excel in virtue have the best right of all to rebel, but then they are of all men the least inclined to do so.
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A man is his own best friend; therefore he ought to love himself best.
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For as the interposition of a rivulet, however small, will occasion the line of the phalanx to fluctuate, so any trifling disagreement will be the cause of seditions; but they will not so soon flow from anything else as from the disagreement between virtue and vice, and next to that between poverty and riches.
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For often, when one is asleep, there is something in consciousness which declares that what then presents itself is but a dream.
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...one Greek city state had a fundamental law: anyone proposing revisions to the constitution did so with a noose around his neck. If his proposal lost he was instantly hanged.
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Of the modes of persuasion furnished by the spoken word there are three kinds. The first kind depends on the personal character ofthe speaker; the second on putting the audience into a certain frame of mind; the third on the proof, provided by the words of the speech itself.
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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?