Aristotle Quotes

548 Sourced Quotes

Sophocles said he drew men as they ought to be, and Euripides as they were.

Aristotle
Error is multiform (for evil is a form of the unlimited, as in the old Pythagorean imagery, and good of the limited), whereas success is possible in one way only (which is why it is easy to fail and difficult to succeed - easy to miss the target and difficult to hit it); so this is another reason why excess and deficiency are a mark of vice, and observance of the mean a mark of virtue: Goodness is simple, badness is manifold.

Aristotle
It may be argued that peoples for whom philosophers legislate are always prosperous.

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

Aristotle
Young men have strong passions and tend to gratify them indiscriminately. Of the bodily desires, it is the sexual by which they are most swayed and in which they show absence of control...They are changeable and fickle in their desires which are violent while they last, but quickly over: their impulses are keen but not deep rooted.

Aristotle
There are two distinctive peculiarities by reference to which we characterize the soul (1) local movement and (2) thinking, discriminating, and perceiving. Thinking both speculative and practical is regarded as akin to a form of perceiving; for in the one as well as the other the soul discriminates and is cognizant of something which is.

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
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
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
Saying the words that come from knowledge is no sign of having it.

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
The soul is the cause or source of the living body. The terms cause and source have many senses. But the soul is the cause of its body alike in all three senses which we explicitly recognize. It is (a) the source or origin of movement, it is (b) the end, it is (c) the essence of the whole living body.

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
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
Everything necessarily is or is not, and will be or will not be; but one cannot divide and say that one or the other is necessary.I mean, for example: it is necessary for there to be or not to be a sea-battle tomorrow; but it is not necessary for a sea-battle to take place tomorrow, or for one not to take place--though it is necessary for one to take place or not to take place.

Aristotle
There are things which seem incredible to most men who have not studied mathematics.

Aristotle
Now the greatest external good we should assume to be the thing which we offer as a tribute to the gods, and which is most coveted by men of high station, and is the prize awarded for the noblest deeds; and such a thing is honor, for honor is clearly the greatest of external goods.

Aristotle
When the consequences of either assumption are the same, we should always assume that things are finite rather than infinite in number, since in things constituted by nature that which is infinite and that which is better ought, if possible, to be present rather than the reverse...

Aristotle
Any change of government which has to be introduced should be one which men, starting from their existing constitutions, will be both willing and able to adopt, since there is quite as much trouble in the reformation of an old constitution as in the establishment of a new one, just as to unlearn is as hard as to learn.

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

Aristotle
If then it be possible that one contrary should exist, or be called into existence, the other contrary will also appear to be possible.

Aristotle
We have divided the Virtues of the Soul into two groups, the Virtues of the Character and the Virtues of the Intellect.

Aristotle