Aristotle Quotes

548 Sourced Quotes

One thing alone not even God can do, To make undone whatever hath been done.

Aristotle
Wishing to be friends is quick work, but friendship is a slow-ripening fruit.

Aristotle
Legislative enactments proceed from men carrying their views a long time back; while judicial decisions are made off hand.

Aristotle
Virtue is more clearly shown in the performance of fine ACTIONS than in the non-performance of base ones.

Aristotle
The brave man, if he be compared with the coward, seems foolhardy; and, if with the foolhardy man, seems a coward.

Aristotle
To give a satisfactory decision as to the truth it is necessary to be rather an arbitrator than a party to the dispute.

Aristotle
For knowing is spoken of in three ways: it may be either universal knowledge or knowledge proper to the matter in hand or actualising such knowledge; consequently three kinds of error also are possible.

Aristotle
He who is unable to live in society, or who has no need because he is sufficient for himself, must be either a beast or a god.

Aristotle
For imagining lies within our power whenever we wish... but in forming opinons we are not free...

Aristotle
Where some people are very wealthy and others have nothing, the result will be either extreme democracy or absolute oligarchy, or despotism will come from either of those excesses.

Aristotle
A state of the soul is either (1) an emotion, (2) a capacity, or (3) a disposition; virtue therefore must be one of these three things.

Aristotle
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.

Aristotle
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.

Aristotle
Where it is in our power to act, it is also in our power to not act.

Aristotle
After these matters we ought perhaps next to discuss pleasure. For it is thought to be most intimately connected with our human nature, which is the reason why in educating the young we steer them by the rudders of pleasure and pain; it is thought, too, that to enjoy the things we ought and to hate the things we ought has the greatest bearing on virtue of character. For these things extend right through life, with a weight and power of their own in respect both to virtue and to the happy life, since men choose what is pleasant and avoid what is painful; and such things, it will be thought, we should least of all omit to discuss, especially since they admit of much dispute.

Aristotle
Now all orators effect their demonstrative proofs by allegation either of enthymems or examples, and, besides these, in no other way whatever.

Aristotle
Music has a power of forming the character, and should therefore be introduced into the education of the young.

Aristotle
A likely impossibility is always preferable to an unconvincing possibility.

Aristotle
I will not allow the Athenians to sin twice against philosophy,

Aristotle
I say that habit's but a long practice, friend, and this becomes men's nature in the end.

Aristotle
So poetry is something more philosophical and more worthy of serious attention than history, for while poetry is concerned with universal truth, history treats of particular facts…The particular facts of the historian are what, say, Alcibiades did, or what happened to him.

Aristotle
But that the unequal should be given to equals, and the unlike to those who are like, is contrary to nature, and nothing which is contrary to nature is good.

Aristotle
We are masters of our actions from the beginning up to the very end. But, in the case of our habits, we are only masters of their commencement--each particular little increase being as imperceptible as in the case of bodily infirmities. But yet our habits are voluntary, in that it was once in our power to adopt or not to adopt such or such a course of conduct.

Aristotle
It is not always the same thing to be a good man and a good citizen.

Aristotle
Neither old people nor sour people seem to make friends easily; for there is little that is pleasant in them...

Aristotle