Aristotle Quotes
-
To learn is a natural pleasure, not confined to philosophers, but common to all men.
-
Wretched, ephemeral race, children of chance and tribulation, why do you force me to tell you the very thing which it would be most profitable for you not to hear? The very best thing is utterly beyond your reach: not to have been born, not to be, to be nothing. However, the second best thing for you is: to die soon.
-
Salt water when it turns into vapour becomes sweet, and the vapour does not form salt water when it condenses again. This I know by experiment. The same thing is true in every case of the kind: wine and all fluids that evaporate and condense back into a liquid state become water. They all are water modified by a certain admixture, the nature of which determines their flavour.
-
All three states - the Lacedaemonian, the Cretan, and the Carthaginian - nearly resemble one another, and are very different from any others. Many of the Carthaginian institutions are excellent. The superiority of their constitution is proved by the fact that the common people remains loyal to the constitution; the Carthaginians have never had any rebellion worth speaking of, and have never been under the rule of a tyrant.
-
Nowadays, for the sake of the advantage which is to be gained from the public revenues and from office, men want to be always in office.
-
That rule is the better which is exercised over better subjects.
-
If the hammer and the shuttle could move themselves, slavery would be unnecessary.
-
To give a satisfactory decision as to the truth it is necessary to be rather an arbitrator than a party to the dispute.
-
Comedy aims at representing men as worse, Tragedy as better than in actual life.
-
Whether if soul did not exist time would exist or not, is a question that may fairly be asked; for if there cannot be someone to count there cannot be anything that can be counted, so that evidently there cannot be number; for number is either what has been, or what can be, counted.
-
If the art of ship-building were in the wood, ships would exist by nature.
-
Hippocrates is an excellent geometer but a complete fool in everyday affairs.
-
What is the highest of all goods achievable by action? ...both the general run of man and people of superior refinement say that it is happiness ...but with regard to what happiness is they differ.
-
The brave man, if he be compared with the coward, seems foolhardy; and, if with the foolhardy man, seems a coward.
-
So, if we must give a general formula applicable to all kinds of soul, we must describe it as the first actuality [entelechy] of anatural organized body.
-
...the life which is best for men, both separately, as individuals, and in the mass, as states, is the life which has virtue sufficiently supported by material resources to facilitate participation in the actions that virtue calls for.
-
We are better able to study our neighbours than ourselves, and their actions than our own.
-
Of all the varieties of virtues, liberalism is the most beloved.
-
Friendship is communion.
-
The good lawgiver should inquire how states and races of men and communities may participate in a good life, and in the happiness which is attainable by them.
-
He overcomes a stout enemy who overcomes his own anger.
-
It is better for a city to be governed by a good man than by good laws.
-
Rhetoric is useful because the true and the just are naturally superior to their opposites, so that, if decisions are improperly made, they must owe their defeat to their own advocates; which is reprehensible. Further, in dealing with certain persons, even if we possessed the most accurate scientific knowledge, we should not find it easy to persuade them by the employment of such knowledge. For scientific discourse is concerned with instruction, but in the case of such persons instruction is impossible.
-
The continuum is that which is divisible into indivisibles that are infinitely divisible.