Aristotle - Life Quotes

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Let us then enunciate the functions of a state and we shall easily elicit what we want: First there must be food; secondly, arts, for life requires many instruments; thirdly, there must be arms, for the members of a community have need of them, and in their own hands, too, in order to maintain authority both against disobedient subjects and against external assailants....

Aristotle
The good lawgiver should inquire how states and races of men and communities may participate in a good life, and in the happiness which is attainable by them.

Aristotle
We may object that we have been of the stars as mere bodies, and as units with a serial order indeed but entirely inanimate; but should rather conceive them as enjoying life and action.

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
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
Women should marry when they are about eighteen years of age, and men at seven and thirty; then they are in the prime of life, and the decline in the powers of both will coincide.

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 life of children, as much as that of intemperate men, is wholly governed by their desires.

Aristotle
Leisure of itself gives pleasure and happiness and enjoyment of life, which are experienced, not by the busy man, but by those who have leisure.

Aristotle
Nature proceeds little by little from things lifeless to animal life in such a way that it is impossible to determine the exact line of demarcation, nor on which side thereof an intermediate form should lie.

Aristotle
The mass of mankind are evidently slavish in their tastes, preferring a life suitable to beasts.

Aristotle
The vigorous are no better than the lazy during one half of life, for all men are alike when asleep.

Aristotle
The happy life is thought to be one of excellence; now an excellent life requires exertion, and does not consist in amusement.

Aristotle
If, then, God is always in that good state in which we sometimes are, this compels our wonder; and if in a better this compels it yet more. And God is in a better state. And life also belongs to God; for the actuality of thought is life, and God is that actuality; and God's self-dependent actuality is life most good and eternal.

Aristotle
Men cling to life even at the cost of enduring great misfortune.

Aristotle
Politicians also have no leisure, because they are always aiming at something beyond political life itself, power and glory, or happiness.

Aristotle
Different men seek after happiness in different ways and by different means, and so make for themselves different modes of life and forms of government.

Aristotle
In poverty and other misfortunes of life, true friends are a sure refuge. The young they keep out of mischief; to the old they are a comfort and aid in their weakness, and those in the prime of life they incite to noble deeds.

Aristotle
Life is full of chances and changes, and the most prosperous of men may in the evening of his days meet with great misfortunes.

Aristotle
It is best to rise from life as from a banquet, neither thirsty nor drunken.

Aristotle
But the whole vital process of the earth takes place so gradually and in periods of time which are so immense compared with the length of our life, that these changes are not observed, and before their course can be recorded from beginning to end whole nations perish and are destroyed.

Aristotle
If what was said in the Ethics is true, that the happy life is the life according to virtue lived without impediment, and that virtue is a mean, then the life which is in a mean, and in a mean attainable by every one, must be the best. And the same principles of virtue and vice are characteristic of cities and of constitutions; for the constitution is in a figure the life of the city.

Aristotle
Youth should be kept strangers to all that is bad, and especially to things which suggest vice or hate. When the five years have passed away, during the two following years they must look on at the pursuits which they are hereafter to learn. There are two periods of life with reference to which education has to be divided, from seven to the age of puberty, and onwards to the age of one and twenty.

Aristotle
The young have exalted notions, because they have not been humbled by life or learned its necessary limitations; moreover, their hopeful disposition makes them think themselves equal to great things—and that means having exalted notions. They would always rather do noble deeds than useful ones: Their lives are regulated more by moral feeling than by reasoning.... All their mistakes are in the direction of doing things excessively and vehemently. They overdo everything; they love too much, hate too much, and the same with everything else.

Aristotle
Those who educate children well are more to be honored than parents, for these only gave life, those the art of living well.

Aristotle
People of superior refinement and of active disposition identify happiness with honour; for this is roughly speaking, the end of political life.

Aristotle
It concerns us to know the purposes we seek in life, for then, like archers aiming at a definite mark, we shall be more likely to attain what we want.

Aristotle
The life of money-making is one undertaken under compulsion, and wealth is evidently not the good we are seeking; for it is merely useful and for the sake of something else.

Aristotle
Just as at the Olympic games it is not the handsomest or strongest men who are crowned with victory but the successful competitors, so in life it is those who act rightly who carry off all the prizes and rewards.

Aristotle
If there is some end of the things we do, which we desire for its own sake, clearly this must be the good. Will not knowledge of it, then, have a great influence on life? Shall we not, like archers who have a mark to aim at, be more likely to hit upon what we should? If so, we must try, in outline at least, to determine what it is.

Aristotle