Aristotle Quotes
-
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.
-
Either a beast or a god.
-
For those who possess and can wield arms are in a position to decide whether the constitution is to continue or not.
-
Temperance and bravery, then, are ruined by excess and deficiency, but preserved by the mean.
-
Of means of persuading by speaking there are three species: some consist in the character of the speaker; others in the disposing the hearer a certain way; others in the thing itself which is said, by reason of its proving, or appearing to prove the point.
-
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.
-
The brave man, if he be compared with the coward, seems foolhardy; and, if with the foolhardy man, seems a coward.
-
A friend to all is a friend to none.
-
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.
-
If the art of ship-building were in the wood, ships would exist by nature.
-
That which most contributes to the permanence of constitutions is the adaptation of education to the form of government, and yet in our own day this principle is universally neglected. The best laws, though sanctioned by every citizen of the state, will be of no avail unless the young are trained by habit and education in the spirit of the constitution.
-
Rhetoric is the counterpart of logic; since both are conversant with subjects of such a nature as it is the business of all to have a certain knowledge of, and which belong to no distinct science. Wherefore all men in some way participate of both; since all, to a certain extent, attempt, as well to sift, as to maintain an argument; as well to defend themselves, as to impeach.
-
For we do not think that we know a thing until we are acquainted with its primary conditions or first principles, and have carried our analysis as far as its simplest elements.
-
Some believe it to be just friends wanting, as if to be healthy enough to wish health.
-
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.
-
The continuum is that which is divisible into indivisibles that are infinitely divisible.
-
Meanness is more ingrained in man's nature than Prodigality; the mass of mankind are avaricious rather than open-handed.
-
It is not the possessions but the desires of mankind which require to be equalized.
-
When you are lonely, when you feel yourself an alien in the world, play Chess. This will raise your spirits and be your counselor in war.
-
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.
-
The principle aim of gymnastics is the education of all youth and not simply that minority of people highly favored by nature.
-
Friendship is communion.
-
There is nothing unequal as the equal treatment of unequals.
-
The fool tells me his reason; the wise man persuades me with my own.