Aristotle Quotes
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Meanness is more ingrained in man's nature than Prodigality; the mass of mankind are avaricious rather than open-handed.
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Youth should be kept strangers to all that is bad, and especially to things which suggest vice or hate. When the five years have passed away, during the two following years they must look on at the pursuits which they are hereafter to learn. There are two periods of life with reference to which education has to be divided, from seven to the age of puberty, and onwards to the age of one and twenty.
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In all well-attempered governments there is nothing which should be more jealously maintained than the spirit of obedience to law, more especially in small matters; for transgression creeps in unperceived and at last ruins the state, just as the constant recurrence of small expenses in time eats up a fortune.
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We have no evidence as yet about mind or the power to think; it seems to be a widely different kind of soul, differing as what is eternal from what is perishable; it alone is capable of existence in isolation from all other psychic powers.
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The soul suffers when the body is diseased or traumatized, while the body suffers when the soul is ailing.
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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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Obstinate people can be divided into the opinionated, the ignorant, and the boorish.
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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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Anaximenes and Anaxagoras and Democritus say that its the earth's flatness is responsible for it staying still: for it does not cut the air beneath but covers it like a lid, which flat bodies evidently do: for they are hard to move even for the winds, on account of their resistance.
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The beginning of reform is not so much to equalize property as to train the noble sort of natures not to desire more, and to prevent the lower from getting more.
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In the perfect state the good man is absolutely the same as the good citizen; whereas in other states the good citizen is only good relatively to his own form of government.
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The goodness or badness, justice or injustice, of laws varies of necessity with the constitution of states. This, however, is clear, that the laws must be adapted to the constitutions. But if so, true forms of government will of necessity have just laws, and perverted forms of government will have unjust laws.
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Some believe it to be just friends wanting, as if to be healthy enough to wish health.
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... There must then be a principle of such a kind that its substance is activity.
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For both excessive and insufficient exercise destroy one's strength, and both eating and drinking too much or too little destroy health, whereas the right quantity produces, increases and preserves it. So it is the same with temperance, courage and the other virtues. This much then, is clear: in all our conduct it is the mean that is to be commended.
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A man can make up his mind quickly when he has only a little to make up.
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For even they who compose treatises of medicine or natural philosophy in verse are denominated Poets: yet Homer and Empedocles have nothing in common except their metre; the former, therefore, justly merits the name of the Poet; while the other should rather be called a Physiologist than a Poet.
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Let us be well persuaded that everyone of us possesses happiness in proportion to his virtue and wisdom, and according as he acts in obedience to their suggestion.
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In inventing a model we may assume what we wish, but should avoid impossibilities.
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In the Laws it is maintained that the best constitution is made up of democracy and tyranny, which are either not constitutions at all, or are the worst of all. But they are nearer the truth who combine many forms; for the constitution is better which is made up of more numerous elements. The constitution proposed in the Laws has no element of monarchy at all; it is nothing but oligarchy and democracy, leaning rather to oligarchy.
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When the citizens at large administer the state for the common interest, the government is called by the generic name - a constitution.
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We become just by performing just action, temperate by performing temperate actions, brave by performing brave action.
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The student of politics therefore as well as the psychologist must study the nature of the soul.
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The moral virtues, then, are produced in us neither by nature nor against nature. Nature, indeed, prepares in us the ground for their reception, but their complete formation is the product of habit.