Aristotle Quotes

548 Sourced Quotes

The seat of the soul and the control of voluntary movement — in fact, of nervous functions in general, — are to be sought in the heart. The brain is an organ of minor importance.

Aristotle
Justice is that virtue of the soul which is distributive according to desert.

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

Aristotle
There are three qualifications required in those who have to fill the highest offices, - (1) first of all, loyalty to the established constitution; (2) the greatest administrative capacity; (3) virtue and justice of the kind proper to each form of government.

Aristotle
The virtue of a faculty is related to the special function which that faculty performs. Now there are three elements in the soul which control action and the attainment of truth: namely, Sensation, Intellect, and Desire. Of these, Sensation never originates action, as is shown by the fact that animals have sensation but are not capable of action.

Aristotle
Of actions some aim at what is necessary and useful, and some at what is honorable. And the preference given to one or the other class of actions must necessarily be like the preference given to one or other part of the soul and its actions over the other; there must be war for the sake of peace, business for the sake of leisure, things useful and necessary for the sake of things honorable.

Aristotle
For as the interposition of a rivulet, however small, will occasion the line of the phalanx to fluctuate, so any trifling disagreement will be the cause of seditions; but they will not so soon flow from anything else as from the disagreement between virtue and vice, and next to that between poverty and riches.

Aristotle
Men must be able to engage in business and go to war, but leisure and peace are better; they must do what is necessary and indeed what is useful, but what is honorable is better. On such principles children and persons of every age which requires education should be trained.

Aristotle
For just as for a flute-player, a sculptor, or an artist, and, in general, for all things that have a function or activity, the good and the well is thought to reside in the function, so would it seem to be for man, if he has a function.

Aristotle
A young man is not a proper hearer of lectures on political science; for he is inexperienced in the actions that occur in life, but its discussions start from these and are about these; and, further, since he tends to follow his passions, his study will be vain and unprofitable, because the end that is aimed at is not knowledge but action. And it makes no difference whether he is young in years or youthful in character.

Aristotle
True happiness flows from the possession of wisdom and virtue and not from the possession of external goods.

Aristotle
Of governments there are said to be only two forms - democracy and oligarchy. For aristocracy is considered to be a kind of oligarchy, as being the rule of a few, and the so-called constitutional government to be really a democracy.

Aristotle
Quite often good things have hurtful consequences. There are instances of men who have been ruined by their money or killed by their courage.

Aristotle
Happiness is a certain activity of soul in conformity with perfect goodness

Aristotle
Not every action or emotion however admits of the observance of a due mean. Indeed the very names of some directly imply evil, for instance malice, shamelessness, envy, and, of actions, adultery, theft, murder. All these and similar actions and feelings are blamed as being bad in themselves; it is not the excess or deficiency of them that we blame. It is impossible therefore ever to go right in regard to them - one must always be wrong;

Aristotle
All food must be capable of being digested, and that what produces digestion is warmth; that is why everything that has soul in it possesses warmth.

Aristotle
The glory, doubtless, of the heavenly bodies fills us with more delight than the contemplation of these lowly things, but the heavens are high, and far off, and the knowledge of celestial things that our senses give us, is scanty and dim.

Aristotle
A good man may make the best even of poverty and disease, and the other ills of life; but he can only attain happiness under the opposite conditions

Aristotle
Rising before daylight is also to be commended; it is a healthy habit, and gives more time for the management of the household as well as for liberal studies.

Aristotle
Opinion involves belief (for without belief in what we opine we cannot have an opinion), and in the brutes though we often find imagination we never find belief.

Aristotle
All three states - the Lacedaemonian, the Cretan, and the Carthaginian - nearly resemble one another, and are very different from any others. Many of the Carthaginian institutions are excellent. The superiority of their constitution is proved by the fact that the common people remains loyal to the constitution; the Carthaginians have never had any rebellion worth speaking of, and have never been under the rule of a tyrant.

Aristotle
Happiness is at once the best, the noblest, and the pleasantest of things.

Aristotle
There is no such thing as committing adultery with the right woman, at the right time, and in the right way, for it is simply WRONG.

Aristotle
Men become richer not only by increasing their existing wealth but also by decreasing their expenditure.

Aristotle
One citizen differs from another, but the salvation of the community is the common business of them all. This community is the constitution; the virtue of the citizen must therefore be relative to the constitution of which he is a member.

Aristotle
If happiness, then, is activity expressing virtue, it is reasonable for it to express the supreme virtue, which will be the virtueof the best thing.

Aristotle
Knowledge of any kind is a thing to be honored and prized...

Aristotle
Now it is evident that the form of government is best in which every man, whoever he is, can act best and live happily.

Aristotle
The attributes of numbers are present in a musical scale and in the heavens.

Aristotle
Laws, when good, should be supreme; and that the magistrate or magistrates should regulate those matters only on which the laws are unable to speak with precision owing to the difficulty of any general principle embracing all particulars.

Aristotle