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. .we would have to say that hereditary succession is harmful. You may say the king, having sovereign power, will not in that case hand over to his children. But it is hard to believe that: it is a difficult achievement, which expects too much virtue of human nature.
Aristotle
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He overcomes a stout enemy who overcomes his own anger.
Aristotle
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The avarice of mankind is insatiable; at one time two obols was pay enough; but now, when this sum has become customary, men always want more and more without end.
Aristotle
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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.
Aristotle
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The continuum is that which is divisible into indivisibles that are infinitely divisible.
Aristotle
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The light of the day is followed by night, as a shadow follows a body.
Aristotle
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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.
Aristotle
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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.
Aristotle
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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.
Aristotle
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There is nothing unequal as the equal treatment of unequals.
Aristotle
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Either a beast or a god.
Aristotle
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While the faculty of sensation is dependent upon the body, mind is separable from it.
Aristotle
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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.
Aristotle
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Boundaries don't protect rivers, people do.
Aristotle
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We are better able to study our neighbours than ourselves, and their actions than our own.
Aristotle
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If the art of ship-building were in the wood, ships would exist by nature.
Aristotle
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Adoration is made out of a solitary soul occupying two bodies.
Aristotle
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Hippocrates is an excellent geometer but a complete fool in everyday affairs.
Aristotle
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The soul suffers when the body is diseased or traumatized, while the body suffers when the soul is ailing.
Aristotle
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God and nature create nothing that does not fulfill a purpose.
Aristotle
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There is always something new coming out of Africa.
Aristotle
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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.
Aristotle
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All men agree that a just distribution must be according to merit in some sense; they do not all specify the same sort of merit, but democrats identify it with freemen, supporters of oligarchy with wealth (or noble birth), and supporters of aristocracy with excellence.
Aristotle
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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.
Aristotle
