Aristotle Quotes

The so-called Pythagoreans, who were the first to take up mathematics, not only advanced this subject, but saturated with it, they fancied that the principles of mathematics were the principles of all things.

It is not easy for a person to do any great harm when his tenure of office is short, whereas long possession begets tyranny.

Life in the true sense is perceiving or thinking.

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.

The structural unity of the parts is such that, if any one of them is displaced or removed, the whole will be disjointed and dis­turbed. For a thing whose presence or absence makes no visible difference is not an organic part of the whole.

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?

Happiness is the meaning and the purpose of life, the whole aim and end of human existence.

To appreciate the beauty of a snow flake, it is necessary to stand out in the cold.

A democracy exists whenever those who are free and are not well-off, being in the majority, are in sovereign control of government, an oligarchy when control lies with the rich and better-born, these being few.

Republics decline into democracies and democracies degenerate into despotisms.

He who is by nature not his own but another's man is by nature a slave.

To the size of the state there is a limit, as there is to plants, animals and implements, for none of these retain their facility when they are too large.

The greatest thing by far is to be a master of metaphor; it is the one thing that cannot be learned from others; and it is also a sign of genius, since a good metaphor implies an intuitive perception of the similarity of the dissimilar.

Anything that we have to learn to do we learn by the actual doing of it; People become builders by building and instrumentalists by playing instruments. Similarily, we become just by performing just acts, temperate by performing temperate ones, brave by performing brave ones.

For what one has to learn to do, we learn by doing.

The complete man must work, study and wrestle.

Since the things we do determine the character of life, no blessed person can become unhappy. For he will never do those things which are hateful and petty.

Music has the power of producing a certain effect on the moral character of the soul, and if it has the power to do this, it is clear that the young must be directed to music and must be educated in it.

If we state the function of man to be a certain kind of life, and this to be an activity or actions of the soul implying a rational principle, and the function of a good man to be the good and noble performance of these, and if any action is well performed when it is performed in accordance with the appropriate excellence human good turns out to be activity of the soul in accordance with virtue, and if there are more than one virtue, in accordance with the best and most complete.

Hippocrates is an excellent geometer but a complete fool in everyday affairs.

First, have a definite, clear practical ideal; a goal, an objective. Second, have the necessary means to achieve your ends; wisdom, money, materials, and methods. Third, adjust all your means to that end.

Happiness is self-connectedness.

Happiness is a sort of action.

The physician heals, Nature makes well.

The goal of war is peace, of business, leisure

All communication must lead to change

A friend is simply one soul in two bodies.

For imagining lies within our power whenever we wish . . . but in forming opinons we are not free . . .

You should never think without an image.

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

For knowing is spoken of in three ways: it may be either universal knowledge or knowledge proper to the matter in hand or actualising such knowledge; consequently three kinds of error also are possible.

Your happiness depends on you alone.

A man is his own best friend; therefore he ought to love himself best.

The same things are best both for individuals and for states, and these are the things which the legislator ought to implant in the minds of his citizens.

Happiness is a thing honored and perfect. This seems to be borne out by the fact that it is a first principle or starting-point, since all other things that all men do are done for its sake; and that which is the first principle and cause of things good we agree to be something honorable and divine.

We must no more ask whether the soul and body are one than ask whether the wax and the figure impressed on it are one.

Hippodamus, son of Euryphon, a native of Miletus, invented the art of planning and laid out the street plan of Piraeus.

Indeed, we may go further and assert that anyone who does not delight in fine actions is not even a good man.

Law is order, and good law is good order.

Consider pleasures as they depart, not as they come.

With the truth, all given facts harmonize; but with what is false, the truth soon hits a wrong note.

Every great genius has an admixture of madness.

No one loves the man whom he fears.

Excellence is an art won by training and habituation. We do not act rightly because we have virtue or excellence, but we rather have those because we have acted rightly. We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.

Salt water when it turns into vapour becomes sweet, and the vapour does not form salt water when it condenses again. This I know by experiment. The same thing is true in every case of the kind: wine and all fluids that evaporate and condense back into a liquid state become water. They all are water modified by a certain admixture, the nature of which determines their flavour.

The things best to know are first principles and causes, but these things are perhaps the most difficult for men to grasp, for they are farthest removed from the senses.

Excellence is not an art. It is the habit of practice.

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.