Aristotle Quotes
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To perceive is to suffer.
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Now that practical skills have developed enough to provide adequately for material needs, one of these sciences which are not devoted to utilitarian ends has been able to arise in Egypt, the priestly caste there having the leisure necessary for disinterested research.
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Inferiors revolt in order that they may be equal, and equals that they may be superior. Such is the state of mind which creates revolutions.
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Homer has taught all other poets the art of telling lies skillfully.
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A poet's object is not to tell what actually happened but what could or would happen either probably or inevitably.... For this reason poetry is something more scientific and serious than history, because poetry tends to give general truths while history gives particular facts.
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That which is excellent endures.
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That which is desirable on its own account and for the sake of knowing it is more of the nature of wisdom than that which is desirable on account of its results.
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As often as we do good, we offer sacrifices to God.
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It is necessary that every thing which is harmonized, should be generated from that which is void of harmony, and that which is void of harmony from that which is harmonized. ...But there is no difference, whether this is asserted of harmony, or of order, or composition... the same reason will apply to all of these.
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The form of government is a democracy when the free, who are also poor and the majority, govern, and an oligarchy when the rich and the noble govern, they being at the same time few in number.
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Neither should men study war with a view to the enslavement of those who do not deserve to be enslaved; but first of all they should provide against their own enslavement, and in the second place obtain empire for the good of the governed, and not for the sake of exercising a general despotism, and in the third place they should seek to be masters only over those who deserve to be slaves.
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Every rascal is not a thief, but every thief is a rascal.
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Everything is done with a goal, and that goal is "good."
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To let them share in the highest offices is to take a risk; inevitably, their unjust standards will cause them to commit injustice, and their lack of judgement will lead them into error. On the other hand there is a risk in not giving them a share, and in their non participation, for when there are many who have no property and no honours they inevitably constitute a huge hostile element in the state. But it can still remain open to them to participate in deliberating and judging.
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The ideal man is his own best friend and takes delight in privacy.
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If the consequences are the same it is always better to assume the more limited antecedent, since in things of nature the limited, as being better, is sure to be found, wherever possible, rather than the unlimited.
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Again, men in general desire the good, and not merely what their fathers had.
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Practical life is not necessarily directed toward other people, as some think; and it is not the case that practical thoughts are only those which result from action for the sake of what ensues. On the contrary, much more practical are those mental activities and reflections which have their goal in themselves and take place for their own sake.
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Truth is a remarkable thing. We cannot miss knowing some of it. But we cannot know it entirely.
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There are three things that are the motives of choice and three that are the motives of avoidance; namely, the noble, the expedient, and the pleasant, and their opposites, the base, the harmful, and the painful. Now in respect of all these the good man is likely to go right and the bad to go wrong, but especially in respect of pleasure; for pleasure is common to man with the lower animals, and also it is a concomitant of all the objects of choice, since both the noble and the expedient appear to us pleasant.
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Every art and every inquiry, and similarly every action and pursuit, is thought to aim at some good; and for this reason the good has rightly been declared to be that at which all things aim.
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But voice is a certain sound of that which is animated; for nothing inanimate emits a voice; but they are said to emit a voice from similitude, as a pipe, and a lyre, and such other inanimate things, have extension, modulation, and dialect; for thus it appears, because voice, also, has these.
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Young people are in a condition like permanent intoxication, because life is sweet and they are growing.
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Every wicked man is in ignorance as to what he ought to do, and from what to abstain, and it is because of error such as this that men become unjust and, in a word, wicked.