Aristotle - Physics

35 Sourced Quotes

View all Aristotle Quotes
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
It is of itself that the divine thought thinks (since it is the most excellent of things), and its thinking is a thinking on thinking.

Aristotle
Whenever anything which has several parts is such that the whole is something over and above its parts, and not just the sum of them all, like a heap, then it always has some cause.

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
Time crumbles things; everything grows old under the power of Time and is forgotten through the lapse of Time.

Aristotle
We, on the other hand, must take for granted that the things that exist by nature are, either all or some of them, in motion.

Aristotle
It will contribute towards one's object, who wishes to acquire a facility in the gaining of knowledge, to doubt judiciously.

Aristotle
The real difference between democracy and oligarchy is poverty and wealth. Wherever men rule by reason of their wealth, whether they be few or many, that is an oligarchy, and where the poor rule, that is a democracy.

Aristotle
Nature herself, as has been often said, requires that we should be able, not only to work well, but to use leisure well; for, as I must repeat once again, the first principle of all action is leisure. Both are required, but leisure is better than occupation and is its end.

Aristotle
Not to know of what things one should demand demonstration, and of what one should not, argues want of education.

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

Aristotle
Time is "number of movement in respect to the before and after", and is continuous since it is an attribute of what is continuous.

Aristotle
Knowledge is the object of our enquiry and men do not think they know a thing till they have grasped the "why" of it.

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

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
Again, we do not regard any of the senses as wisdom; yet surely these give us the most authoritative knowledge of particulars. But they do not tell us the "why" of anything — e.g., why fire is hot; they only say that it is hot.

Aristotle
Demonstration is also something necessary, because a demonstration cannot go otherwise than it does,... And the cause of this lies with the primary premises/principles.

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

Aristotle
But also philosophy is not about perceptible substances they, you see, are prone to destruction.

Aristotle
Suppose, then, that all men were sick or deranged, save one or two of them who were healthy and of right mind. It would then be the latter two who would be thought to be sick and deranged and the former not!

Aristotle
Those who assert that the mathematical sciences say nothing of the beautiful or the good are in error. For these sciences say and prove a great deal about them; if they do not expressly mention them, but prove attributes which are their results or definitions, it is not true that they tell us nothing about them. The chief forms of beauty are order and symmetry and definiteness, which the mathematical sciences demonstrate in a special degree.

Aristotle
The science we are after is not about mathematicals either none of them, you see, is separable.

Aristotle
If men are given food, but no chastisement nor any work, they become insolent.

Aristotle
The totality is not, as it were, a mere heap, but the whole is something besides the parts.

Aristotle
If purpose, then, is inherent in art, so is it in Nature also. The best illustration is the case of a man being his own physician, for Nature is like that— agent and patient at once.

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
The natural way of doing this [seeking scientific knowledge or explanation of fact] is to start from the things which are more knowable and obvious to us and proceed towards those which are clearer and more knowable by nature; for the same things are not 'knowable relatively to us' and 'knowable' without qualification. So in the present inquiry we must follow this method and advance from what is more obscure by nature, but clearer to us, towards what is more clear and more knowable by nature. Now what is to us plain and obvious at first is rather confused masses, the elements and principles of which became known to us by later analysis...

Aristotle
The final cause, then, produces motion through being loved.

Aristotle