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
All men, or most men, wish what is noble but choose what is profitable; and while it is noble to render a service not with an eye to receiving one in return, it is profitable to receive one. One ought therefore, if one can, to return the equivalent of services received, and to do so willingly; for one ought not to make a man one's friend if one is unwilling to return his favors.

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

Aristotle
Great and frequent reverses can crush and mar our bliss both by the pain they cause and by the hindrance they offer to many activities. Yet nevertheless even in adversity nobility shines through, when a man endures repeated and severe misfortune with patience, not owing to insensibility but from generosity and greatness of soul.

Aristotle
When several villages are united in a single complete community, large enough to be nearly or quite self-sufficing, the state comes into existence, originating in the bare needs of life, and continuing in existence for the sake of a good life.

Aristotle
The greater the length, the more beautiful will the piece be by reason of its size, provided that the whole be perspicuous.

Aristotle
That which is in locomotion must arrive at the half-way stage before it arrives at the goal. (Travel over any finite distance can neither be completed nor begun, and so all motion must be an illusion.)

Aristotle
For that which has become habitual, becomes as it were natural.

Aristotle
The man with a host of friends who slaps on the back everybody he meets is regarded as the friend of nobody.

Aristotle
If everything when it occupies an equal space is at rest, and if that which is in locomotion is always occupying such a space at any moment, the flying arrow is therefore motionless.

Aristotle
In the first place, then, men should guard against the beginning of change, and in the second place they should not rely upon the political devices of which I have already spoken invented only to deceive the people, for they are proved by experience to be useless.

Aristotle
Something is infinite if, taking it quantity by quantity, we can always take something outside.

Aristotle
Moral qualities are so constituted as to be destroyed by excess and by deficiency...

Aristotle
Hence both women and children must be educated with an eye to the constitution, if indeed it makes any difference to the virtue of a city-state that its children be virtuous, and its women too. And it must make a difference, since half the free population are women, and from children come those who participate in the constitution.

Aristotle
When we look at the matter from another point of view, great caution would seem to be required. For the habit of lightly changing the laws is an evil, and, when the advantage is small, some errors both of lawgivers and rulers had better be left; the citizen will not gain so much by making the change as he will lose by the habit of disobedience.

Aristotle
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.

Aristotle
Some men turn every quality or art into a means of making money; this they conceive to be the end, and to the promotion of the end all things must contribute.

Aristotle
Thus then a single harmony orders the composition of the whole...by the mingling of the most contrary principles.

Aristotle
The state or political community, which is the highest of all, and which embraces all the rest, aims at good in a greater degree than any other, and at the highest good.

Aristotle
To be always seeking after the useful does not become free and exalted souls.

Aristotle
As for the story, whether the poet takes it ready made or constructs it for himself, he should first sketch its general outline, and then fill in the episodes and amplify in detail.

Aristotle
Happiness is an activity of the soul in accordance with virtue

Aristotle
It is our actions and the soul's active exercise of its functions that we posit (as being Happiness);

Aristotle
While those whom devotion to abstract discussions has rendered unobservant of the facts are too ready to dogmatize on the basis of a few observations.

Aristotle
Of the modes of persuasion furnished by the spoken word there are three kinds. The first kind depends on the personal character ofthe speaker; the second on putting the audience into a certain frame of mind; the third on the proof, provided by the words of the speech itself.

Aristotle
That rule is the better which is exercised over better subjects.

Aristotle
If 'bounded by a surface' is the definition of body there cannot be an infinite body either intelligible or sensible.

Aristotle
Finally, if nothing can be truly asserted, even the following claim would be false, the claim that there is no true assertion.

Aristotle