Aristotle Quotes

If they do not share equally enjoyments and toils, those who labor much and get little will necessarily complain of those who labor little and receive or consume much. But indeed there is always a difficulty in men living together and having all human relations in common, but especially in their having common property.

The roots of education are bitter, but the fruit is sweet.

Anyone who has no need of anybody but himself is either a beast or a God.

So that the lover of myths, which are a compact of wonders, is by the same token a lover of wisdom.

Thinking is different from perceiving and is held to be in part imagination, in part judgment

When we look at the matter from another point of view, great caution would seem to be required. For the habit of lightly changing the laws is an evil, and, when the advantage is small, some errors both of lawgivers and rulers had better be left; the citizen will not gain so much by making the change as he will lose by the habit of disobedience.

Happiness is the settling of the soul into its most appropriate spot.

There is no genius who hasn't a touch of insanity.

The angry man wishes the object of his anger to suffer in return; hatred wishes its object not to exist.

If you prove the cause, you at once prove the effect; and conversely nothing can exist without its cause.

Our feelings towards our friends reflect our feelings towards ourselves.

The soul is characterized by these capacities; self-nutrition, sensation, thinking, and movement.

Happiness is essentially perfect; so that the happy man requires in addition the goods of the body, external goods and the gifts of fortune, in order that his activity may not be impeded through lack of them.

Excellence, then, is a state concerned with choice, lying in a mean, relative to us, this being determined by reason and in the way in which the man of practical wisdom would determine it.

This world is inescapably linked to the motions of the worlds above. All power in this world is ruled by these options.

The true end of tragedy is to purify the passions.

Comedy has had no history, because it was not at first treated seriously.

One kind of justice is that which is manifested in distributions of honour or money or the other things that fall to be divided among those who have a share in the constitution ... and another kind is that which plays a rectifying part in transactions.

It is of the nature of desire not to be satisfied, and most men live only for the gratification of it.

Of ill-temper there are three kinds: irascibility, bitterness, sullenness. It belongs to the ill-tempered man to be unable to bear either small slights or defeats but to be given to retaliation and revenge, and easily moved to anger by any chance deed or word. Ill-temper is accompanied by excitability of character, instability, bitter speech, and liability to take offence at trifles and to feel these feelings quickly and on slight occasions.

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.

A likely impossibility is always preferable to an unconvincing possibility.

Happiness does not lie in amusement; it would be strange if one were to take trouble and suffer hardship all one's life in order to amuse oneself.

Perhaps here we have a clue to the reason why royal rule used to exist formerly, namely the difficulty of finding enough men of outstanding virtue.

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.

Prosperity makes friends and adversity tries them. A true friend is one soul in two bodies

There are three things that are the motives of choice and three that are the motives of avoidance; namely, the noble, the expedient, and the pleasant, and their opposites, the base, the harmful, and the painful. Now in respect of all these the good man is likely to go right and the bad to go wrong, but especially in respect of pleasure; for pleasure is common to man with the lower animals, and also it is a concomitant of all the objects of choice, since both the noble and the expedient appear to us pleasant.

Justice is the loveliest and health is the best. but the sweetest to obtain is the heart's desire.

Neither should we forget the mean, which at the present day is lost sight of in perverted forms of government; for many practices which appear to be democratical are the ruin of democracies, . . Those who think that all virtue is to be found in their own party principles push matters to extremes; they do not consider that disproportion destroys a state.

Wicked me obey from fear; good men,from love.

Money is a guarantee that we can have what we want in the future

The investigation of the truth is in one way hard, in another easy. An indication of this is found in the fact that no one is able to attain the truth adequately, while, on the other hand, no one fails entirely, but everyone says something true about the nature of all things, and while individually they contribute little or nothing to the truth, by the union of all a considerable amount is amassed.

So the good has been well explained as that at which all things aim.

The law is reason, free from passion.

It is absurd to hold that a man ought to be ashamed of being unable to defend himself with his limbs, but not of being unable to defend himself with speech and reason, when the use of rational speech is more distinctive of a human being than the use of his limbs.

And this lies in the nature of things: What people are potentially is revealed in actuality by what they produce.

One swallow does not make a spring, nor does one fine day.

The Life of the intellect is the best and pleasantest for man, because the intellect more than anything else is the man. Thus it will be the happiest life as well.

Everything that depends on the action of nature is by nature as good as it can be.

We assume therefore that moral virtue is the quality of acting in the best way in relation to pleasures and pains, and that vice is the opposite.

Men are marked from the moment of birth to rule or be ruled.

Teachers, who educate children, deserve more honour than parents, who merely gave them birth; for the latter provided mere life, while the former ensure a good life.

In all things which have a plurality of parts, and which are not a total aggregate but a whole of some sort distinct from the parts, there is some cause.

Marriage is like retiring as a bachelor and getting a sexual pension. You don't have to work for the sex any more, but you only get 65% as much.

You can never learn anything that you did not already know

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.

When you ask a dumb question, you get a smart answer.

Patience s bitter, but it's fruit is sweet.