Aristotle Quotes
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That the equalization of property exercises an influence on political society was clearly understood even by some of the old legislators. Laws were made by Solon and others prohibiting an individual from possessing as much land as he pleased.
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The soul consists of two parts, one irrational and the other capable of reason. Whether these two parts are really distinct in the sense that the parts of the body or of any other divisible whole are distinct, or whether though distinguishable in thought as two they are inseparable in reality, like the convex and concave of a curve, is a question of no importance for the matter in hand.
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Men become builders by building and lyreplayers by playing the lyre; so too we become just by doing just acts, temperate by doing temperate acts, brave by doing brave acts.
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It is easier to get one or a few of good sense, and of ability to legislate and adjudge, than to get many.
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A city is composed of different kinds of men; similar people cannot bring a city into existence.
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Since music has so much to do with the molding of character, it is necessary that we teach it to our children.
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The physician himself, if sick, actually calls in another physician, knowing that he cannot reason correctly if required to judge his own condition while suffering.
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Experience has shown that it is difficult, if not impossible, for a populous state to be run by good laws.
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Politicians also have no leisure, because they are always aiming at something beyond political life itself, power and glory, or happiness.
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The good man is he for whom, because he is virtuous, the things that are absolutely good are good; it is also plain that his use of these goods must be virtuous and in the absolute sense good.
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So virtue is a purposive disposition, lying in a mean that is relative to us and determined by a rational principle, and by that which a prudent man would use to determine it. It is a mean between two kinds of vice, one of excess and the other of deficiency.
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The ensouled is distinguished from the unsouled by its being alive. Now since being alive is spoken of in many ways, even if only one of these is present, we say that the thing is alive, if, for instance, there is intellect or perception or spatial movement and rest or indeed movement connected with nourishment and growth and decay. It is for this reason that all the plants are also held to be alive . . .
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We, on the other hand, must take for granted that the things that exist by nature are, either all or some of them, in motion.
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The vigorous are no better than the lazy during one half of life, for all men are alike when asleep.
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The angry man wishes the object of his anger to suffer in return; hatred wishes its object not to exist.
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Something is infinite if, taking it quantity by quantity, we can always take something outside.
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Now property is part of a household, and the acquisition of property part of household-management; for neither life itself nor the good life is possible without a certain minimum supply of the necessities.
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Cruel is the strife of brothers.
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It is evident, then, that there is a sort of education in which parents should train their sons, not as being useful or necessary, but because it is liberal or noble.
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Should a man live underground, and there converse with the works of art and mechanism, and should afterwards be brought up into the open day, and see the several glories of the heaven and earth, he would immediately pronounce them the work of such a Being as we define God to be.
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The rattle is a toy suited to the infant mind, and education is a rattle or toy for children of larger growth.
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Life cannot be lived, and understood, simultaneously.
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Great is the good fortune of a state in which the citizens have a moderate and sufficient property.
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Even if we could suppose the citizen body to be virtuous, without each of them being so, yet the latter would be better, for in the virtue of each the virtue of all is involved.