Aristotle Quotes

548 Sourced Quotes

Friends are much better tried in bad fortune than in good.

Aristotle
For though we love both the truth and our friends, piety requires us to honor the truth first.

Aristotle
Every wicked man is in ignorance as to what he ought to do, and from what to abstain, and it is because of error such as this that men become unjust and, in a word, wicked.

Aristotle
Sophocles said that he drew men as they ought to be, whereas Euripides drew them as they are.

Aristotle
The man who confers a favour would rather not be repaid in the same coin.

Aristotle
It is clear, then, that wisdom is knowledge having to do with certain principles and causes. But now, since it is this knowledge that we are seeking, we must consider the following point: of what kind of principles and of what kind of causes is wisdom the knowledge?

Aristotle
Those who are not angry at the things they should be angry at are thought to be fools, and so are those who are not angry in the right way, at the right time, or with the right persons.

Aristotle
And so long as they were at war, their power was preserved, but when they had attained empire they fell, for of the arts of peace they knew nothing, and had never engaged in any employment higher than war.

Aristotle
That judges of important causes should hold office for life is a disputable thing, for the mind grows old as well as the body.

Aristotle
The law does not expressly permit suicide, and what it does not permit it forbids.

Aristotle
If the poor, for example, because they are more in number, divide among themselves the property of the rich,- is not this unjust?.. this law of confiscation clearly cannot be just.

Aristotle
It is the repeated performance of just and temperate actions that produces virtue.

Aristotle
The entire preoccupation of the physicist is with things that contain within themselves a principle of movement and rest.

Aristotle
In framing an ideal we may assume what we wish, but should avoid impossibilities.

Aristotle
Persuasion is effected through the medium of the hearers, when they shall have been brought to a state of excitement under the influence of speech; for we do not, when influenced by pain or joy, or partiality or dislike, award our decisions in the same way; about which means of persuasion alone, I declare that the system-mongers of the present day busy themselves.

Aristotle
No one finds fault with defects which are the result of nature.

Aristotle
A democracy is a government in the hands of men of low birth, no property, and vulgar employments.

Aristotle
The specific excellence of verbal expression in poetry is to be clear without being low.

Aristotle
When couples have children in excess, let abortion be procured before sense and life have begun; what may or may not be lawfully done in these cases depends on the question of life and sensation.

Aristotle
He who can be, and therefore is, another's, and he who participates in reason enough to apprehend, but not to have, is a slave by nature.

Aristotle
Of old, the demagogue was also a general, and then democracies changed into tyrannies. Most of the ancient tyrants were originally demagogues. They are not so now, but they were then; and the reason is that they were generals and not orators, for oratory had not yet come into fashion.

Aristotle
It is the mark of an educated mind to rest satisfied with the degree of precision which the nature of the subject admits and not to seek exactness where only an approximation is possible.

Aristotle
It is not the possessions but the desires of mankind which require to be equalized.

Aristotle