Aristotle Quotes
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How strange it is that Socrates, after having made the children common, should hinder lovers from carnal intercourse only, but should permit love and familiarities between father and son or between brother and brother, than which nothing can be more unseemly, since even without them love of this sort is improper. How strange, too, to forbid intercourse for no other reason than the violence of the pleasure, as though the relationship of father and son or of brothers with one another made no difference.
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What it lies in our power to do, it lies in our power not to do.
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Men are divided between those who are as thrifty as if they would live forever, and those who are as extravagant as if they were going to die the next day.
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Tyrants preserve themselves by sowing fear and mistrust among the citizens by means of spies, by distracting them with foreign wars, by eliminating men of spirit who might lead a revolution, by humbling the people, and making them incapable of decisive action.
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Virtue makes us aim at the right end, and practical wisdom makes us take the right means.
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All that we do is done with an eye to something else.
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The aim of the wise is not to secure pleasure, but to avoid pain.
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It is more difficult to organize a peace than to win a war; but the fruits of victory will be lost if the peace is not organized.
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Men are swayed more by fear than by reverence.
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The greatest injustices proceed from those who pursue excess, not by those who are driven by necessity.
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By myth I mean the arrangement of the incidents.
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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.
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Courage is the first virtue that makes all other virtues possible.
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The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance.
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We should venture on the study of every kind of animal without distaste; for each and all will reveal to us something natural and something beautiful.
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In justice is all virtues found in sum.
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We are what we repeatedly do... excellence, therefore, isn't just an act, but a habit and life isn't just a series of events, but an ongoing process of self-definition.
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Each human being is bred with a unique set of potentials that yearn to be fulfilled as surely as the acorn yearns to become the oak within it.
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The best tragedies are conflicts between a hero and his destiny.
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A fool contributes nothing worth hearing and takes offense at everything.
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They - Young People have exalted notions, because they have not been humbled by life or learned its necessary limitations; moreover, their hopeful disposition makes them think themselves equal to great things - and that means having exalted notions. They would always rather do noble deeds than useful ones: Their lives are regulated more by moral feeling than by reasoning - all their mistakes are in the direction of doing things excessively and vehemently. They overdo everything - they love too much, hate too much, and the same with everything else.
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Melancholy men of all others are most witty, which causeth many times a divine ravishment, and a kinde of Enthusiasmus, which stirreth them up to bee excellent Philosophers, Poets, Prophets, etc.
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Education and morals make the good man, the good statesman, the good ruler.
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It is a part of probability that many improbable things will happen.