Aristotle Quotes
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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.
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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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Virtue is more clearly shown in the performance of fine ACTIONS than in the non-performance of base ones.
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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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Metaphysics is universal and is exclusively concerned with primary substance. ... And here we will have the science to study that which is, both in its essence and in the properties which it has.
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He overcomes a stout enemy who overcomes his own anger.
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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 whole is more than the sum of its parts.
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If happiness is activity in accordance with excellence, it is reasonable that it should be in accordance with the highest excellence.
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All Earthquakes and Disasters are warnings; there’s too much corruption in the world.
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A young man is not a proper hearer of lectures on political science; for he is inexperienced in the actions that occur in life, but its discussions start from these and are about these; and, further, since he tends to follow his passions, his study will be vain and unprofitable, because the end that is aimed at is not knowledge but action. And it makes no difference whether he is young in years or youthful in character.
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Such an event is probable in Agathon's sense of the word: 'it is probable,' he says, 'that many things should happen contrary to probability.'
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The brave man, if he be compared with the coward, seems foolhardy; and, if with the foolhardy man, seems a coward.
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It is the mark of an educated mind to rest satisfied with the degree of precision which the nature of the subject admits and not to seek exactness where only an approximation is possible.
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To give a satisfactory decision as to the truth it is necessary to be rather an arbitrator than a party to the dispute.
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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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We maintain, and have said in the Ethics, if the arguments there adduced are of any value, that happiness is the realization and perfect exercise of virtue, and this not conditional, but absolute. And I used the term 'conditional' to express that which is indispensable, and 'absolute' to express that which is good in itself.
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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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Of ill-temper there are three kinds: irascibility, bitterness, sullenness. It belongs to the ill-tempered man to be unable to bear either small slights or defeats but to be given to retaliation and revenge, and easily moved to anger by any chance deed or word. Ill-temper is accompanied by excitability of character, instability, bitter speech, and liability to take offence at trifles and to feel these feelings quickly and on slight occasions.
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We must no more ask whether the soul and body are one than ask whether the wax and the figure impressed on it are one.
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To leave the number of births unrestricted, as is done in most states, inevitably causes poverty among the citizens, and poverty produces crime and faction.
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The fool tells me his reason; the wise man persuades me with my own.
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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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Temperance and bravery, then, are ruined by excess and deficiency, but preserved by the mean.