Aristotle Quotes
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A period may be defined as a portion of speech that has in itself a beginning and an end, being at the same time not too big to be taken in at a glance.
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The laws are, and ought to be, relative to the constitution, and not the constitution to the laws. A constitution is the organization of offices in a state, and determines what is to be the governing body, and what is the end of each community. But laws are not to be confounded with the principles of the constitution; they are the rules according to which the magistrates should administer the state, and proceed against offenders.
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So, if we must give a general formula applicable to all kinds of soul, we must describe it as the first actuality of anatural organized body.
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The many are more incorruptible than the few; they are like the greater quantity of water which is less easily corrupted than a little.
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Equality is of two kinds, numerical and proportional; by the first I mean sameness of equality in number or size; by the second, equality of ratios.
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Revolutions are not about trifles, but spring from trifles.
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The sun, moving as it does, sets up processes of change and becoming and decay, and by its agency the finest and sweetest water is every day carried up and is dissolved into vapour and rises to the upper region, where it is condensed again by the cold and so returns to the earth. This, as we have said before, is the regular course of nature.
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Thus then a single harmony orders the composition of the whole...by the mingling of the most contrary principles.
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Now the greatest external good we should assume to be the thing which we offer as a tribute to the gods, and which is most coveted by men of high station, and is the prize awarded for the noblest deeds; and such a thing is honor, for honor is clearly the greatest of external goods.
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Where the laws are not supreme, there demagogues spring up.
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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.
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Anybody can get hit over the head.
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The mathematical sciences particularly exhibit order symmetry and limitations; and these are the greatest forms of the beautiful.
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Our account does not rob the mathematicians of their science... In point of fact they do not need the infinite and do not use it.
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It is clear, then, that the earth must be at the centre and immovable, not only for the reasons already given, but also because heavy bodies forcibly thrown quite straight upward return to the point from which they started, even if they are thrown to an infinite distance. From these considerations then it is clear that the earth does not move and does not lie elsewhere than at the centre.
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We have divided the Virtues of the Soul into two groups, the Virtues of the Character and the Virtues of the Intellect.
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The man who is truly good and wise will bear with dignity whatever fortune sends, and will always make the best of his circumstances.
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Hippocrates is an excellent geometer but a complete fool in everyday affairs.
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Just as a royal rule, if not a mere name, must exist by virtue of some great personal superiority in the king, so tyranny, which is the worst of governments, is necessarily the farthest removed from a well-constituted form; oligarchy is little better, for it is a long way from aristocracy, and democracy is the most tolerable of the three.
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...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.
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The heart is the perfection of the whole organism. Therefore the principles of the power of perception and the souls ability to nourish itself must lie in the heart.
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The principle aim of gymnastics is the education of all youth and not simply that minority of people highly favored by nature.
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It is not necessary to ask whether soul and body are one, just as it is not necessary to ask whether the wax and its shape are one, nor generally whether the matter of each thing and that of which it is the matter are one. For even if one and being are spoken of in several ways, what is properly so spoken of is the actuality.
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The continuum is that which is divisible into indivisibles that are infinitely divisible.