| QuoteID.com |
Home > Quotes by Person > Aristotle
All paid jobs absorb and degrade the mind.
The good citizen need not of necessity possess the virtue which makes a good man. (III.1276b34)
It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.
Happiness depends upon ourselves.
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 reason is more distinctive of a human being than the use of his limbs. (I.1355b1)
Most people would rather give than get affection.
Piety requires us to honor truth above our friends. (I.1096a16)
Of all the varieties of virtues, liberalism is the most beloved.
Variant: The best friend is the man who in wishing me well wishes it for my sake.
Humor is the only test of gravity, and gravity of humor; for a subject which will not bear raillery is suspicious, and a jest which will not bear serious examination is false wit.
For some identify happiness with virtue, some with practical wisdom, others with a kind of philosophic wisdom, others with these, or one of these, accompanied by pleasure or not without pleasure; while others include also external prosperity. Now ... it is not probable that these should be entirely mistaken, but rather that they should be right in at least some one respect or even in most respects. (I.1098b23)
That judges of important causes should hold office for life is a disputable thing, for the mind grows old as well as the body. (II.1270b39)
In a democracy the poor will have more power than the rich, because there are more of them, and the will of the majority is supreme.
Variants: Dignity does not come in possessing honors, but in deserving them.
Dignity consists not in possessing honors, but in the consciousness that we deserve them.
Everything that depends on the action of nature is by nature as good as it can be, and similarly everything that depends on art or any rational cause, and especially if it depends on the best of all causes. To entrust to chance what is greatest and most noble would be a very defective arrangement. (I.1099b22)
Man, when perfected, is the best of animals, but when separated from law and justice, he is the worst of all. (I.1253a31)
I have gained this by philosophy: that I do without being commanded what others do only from fear of the law.
Both oligarch and tyrant mistrust the people, and therefore deprive them of their arms. (V.1311a11)
May not we then confidently pronounce that man happy who realizes complete goodness in action, and is adequately furnished with external goods? Or should we add, that he must also be destined to go on living not for any casual period but throughout a complete lifetime in the same manner, and to die accordingly, because the future is hidden from us, and we conceive happiness as an end, something utterly and absolutely final and complete? If this is so, we shall pronounce those of the living who possess and are destined to go on possessing the good things we have specified to be supremely blessed, though on the human scale of bliss. (I.1101a10)
For the things we have to learn before we can do them, we learn by doing them.
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.
We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.
It is well said, then, that it is by doing just acts that the just man is produced, and by doing temperate acts the temperate man; without doing these no one would have even a prospect of becoming good. But most people do not do these, but take refuge in theory and think they are being philosophers and will become good in this way, behaving somewhat like patients who listen attentively to their doctors, but do none of the things they are ordered to do. (II.1105b9)
Variant: All men by nature desire knowledge...
The first sentence is in the Oxford Dictionary of Scientific Quotations (2005), 21:10.
Variant: All human actions have one or more of these seven causes: chance, nature, compulsions, habit, reason, passion and desire.
Nature does nothing uselessly. (I.1253a8)
Democracy arises out of the notion that those who are equal in any respect are equal in all respects; because men are equally free, they claim to be absolutely equal.
The basis of a democratic state is liberty. (VI.1317a40)
Man is by nature a political animal. (I.1253a2)
The aim of the wise is not to secure pleasure, but to avoid pain.
The one exclusive sign of thorough knowledge is the power of teaching.
Variants: No great genius has ever existed without some touch of madness.
There is no great genius without a mixture of madness.
There was never a genius without a tincture of madness.
The virtue of justice consists in moderation, as regulated by wisdom.
What it lies in our power to do, it lies in our power not to do.
Wicked men obey from fear; good men, from love.
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.
Education is the best provision for old age.
The trade of the petty usurer is hated with most reason: it makes a profit from currency itself, instead of making it from the process which currency was meant to serve. Their common characteristic is obviously their sordid avarice.
The more thou dost advance, the more thy feet pitfalls will meet. The Path that leadeth on is lighted by one fire— the light of daring burning in the heart. The more one dares, the more he shall obtain. The more he fears, the more that light shall pale— and that alone can guide.
The least initial deviation from the truth is multiplied later a thousandfold.
All virtue is summed up in dealing justly.
Bashfulness is an ornament to youth, but a reproach to old age.
It is the mark of an educated man to look for precision in each class of things just so far as the nature of the subject admits; it is evidently equally foolish to accept probable reasoning from a mathematician and to demand from a rhetorician scientific proofs. (I.1094b24)
The generality of men are naturally apt to be swayed by fear rather than reverence, and to refrain from evil rather because of the punishment that it brings than because of its own foulness.
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. (I.1098a13)
"We live in deeds, not years: In thoughts not breaths; In feelings, not in figures on a dial. We should count time by heart throbs. He most lives Who thinks most, feels the noblest, acts the best."
Variant: It is Homer who has chiefly taught other poets the art of telling lies skillfully.
Melancholic men are of all others the most witty.
It is easy to perform a good action, but not easy to acquire a settled habit of performing such actions.
The soul never thinks without a picture.
Misfortune shows those who are not really friends.
Poetry is finer and more philosophical than history; for poetry expresses the universal, and history only the particular. (1451b6)
Strange that the vanity which accompanies beauty— excusable, perhaps, when there is such great beauty, or at any rate understandable— should persist after the beauty was gone.
The roots of education are bitter, but the fruit is sweet.
Law is order, and good law is good order. (VII.1326a29)
Well begun is half done. (V.1303b30)
Those who excel in virtue have the best right of all to rebel, but then they are of all men the least inclined to do so.
Life in the true sense is perceiving or thinking.
In the arena of human life the honours and rewards fall to those who show their good qualities.
When people are friends, they have no need of justice, but when they are just, they need friendship in addition. (VIII.1155a26)
If liberty and equality, as is thought by some, are chiefly to be found in democracy, they will be best attained when all persons alike share in the government to the utmost. (IV.1291b34)
The worst form of inequality is to try to make unequal things equal.
Time crumbles things; everything grows old under the power of Time and is forgotten through the lapse of Time.
The greatest virtues are those which are most useful to other persons.
We must as second best, as people say, take the least of the evils. (II.1109a34)
In cases of this sort, let us say adultery, rightness and wrongness do not depend on committing it with the right woman at the right time and in the right manner, but the mere fact of committing such action at all is to do wrong. (II.1107a15)
A tragedy, then, is the imitation of an action ... with incidents arousing pity and fear, wherewith to accomplish its catharsis of such emotions. (1449b24)
Wit is well-bred insolence. (II.1389b11)
And happiness is thought to depend on leisure; for we are busy that we may have leisure, and make war that we may live in peace. (X.1177b4)
Again, men in general desire the good, and not merely what their fathers had. (II.1269a4)
The law is reason unaffected by desire. (III.1287a32)
Plato is dear to me, but dearer still is truth.
Oxford Dictionary of Scientific Quotations (2005), 21:9.
That in the soul which is called the mind is, before it thinks, not actually any real thing.
Variant: This is the reason why mothers are more devoted to their children than fathers: it is that they suffer more in giving them birth and are more certain that they are their own.
The gods too are fond of a joke.
Variant: Moral excellence comes about as a result of habit. We become just by doing just acts, temperate by doing temperate acts, brave by doing brave acts.
Variant: The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
Concerning the generation of animals akin to them, as hornets and wasps, the facts in all cases are similar to a certain extent, but are devoid of the extraordinary features which characterize bees; this we should expect, for they have nothing divine about them as the bees have.
Pleasure in the job puts perfection in the work.
He who has overcome his fears will truly be free.
But the greatest thing by far is to have a command of metaphor. This alone cannot be imparted by another; it is the mark of genius, for to make good metaphors implies an eye for resemblances. (1459a4)
A friend is a second self.
To the query, "What is a friend?" his reply was "A single soul dwelling in two bodies."
In nine cases out of ten, a woman had better show more affection than she feels.
It is just that we should be grateful, not only to those with whose views we may agree, but also to those who have expressed more superficial views; for these also contributed something, by developing before us the powers of thought.
(quoting a proverb)
Change in all things is sweet.
With regard to excellence, it is not enough to know, but we must try to have and use it.
You will never do anything in this world without courage. It is the greatest quality of the mind next to honor.
To give a satisfactory decision as to the truth it is necessary to be rather an arbitrator than a party to the dispute.
Poverty is the parent of revolution and crime.
Friendship is essentially a partnership.
Equality consists in the same treatment of similar persons.
The vices respectively fall short of or exceed what is right in both passions and actions, while virtue both finds and chooses that which is intermediate. (II.1107a4)
In all things of nature there is something of the marvelous.
- Aristotle Rate and Discuss this quote
- Aristotle Rate and Discuss this quote
- Aristotle Rate and Discuss this quote
- Aristotle Rate and Discuss this quote
- Aristotle Rate and Discuss this quote
- Aristotle Rate and Discuss this quote
- Aristotle Rate and Discuss this quote
- Aristotle Rate and Discuss this quote
- Aristotle Rate and Discuss this quote
- Aristotle Rate and Discuss this quote
- Aristotle Rate and Discuss this quote
- Aristotle Rate and Discuss this quote
- Aristotle Rate and Discuss this quote
- Aristotle Rate and Discuss this quote
- Aristotle Rate and Discuss this quote
- Aristotle Rate and Discuss this quote
- Aristotle Rate and Discuss this quote
- Aristotle Rate and Discuss this quote
- Aristotle Rate and Discuss this quote
- Aristotle Rate and Discuss this quote
- Aristotle Rate and Discuss this quote
- Aristotle Rate and Discuss this quote
- Aristotle Rate and Discuss this quote
- Aristotle Rate and Discuss this quote
- Aristotle Rate and Discuss this quote
- Aristotle Rate and Discuss this quote
- Aristotle Rate and Discuss this quote
- Aristotle Rate and Discuss this quote
- Aristotle Rate and Discuss this quote
- Aristotle Rate and Discuss this quote
- Aristotle Rate and Discuss this quote
- Aristotle Rate and Discuss this quote
- Aristotle Rate and Discuss this quote
- Aristotle Rate and Discuss this quote
- Aristotle Rate and Discuss this quote
- Aristotle Rate and Discuss this quote
- Aristotle Rate and Discuss this quote
- Aristotle Rate and Discuss this quote
- Aristotle Rate and Discuss this quote
- Aristotle Rate and Discuss this quote
- Aristotle Rate and Discuss this quote
- Aristotle Rate and Discuss this quote
- Aristotle Rate and Discuss this quote
- Aristotle Rate and Discuss this quote
- Aristotle Rate and Discuss this quote
- Aristotle Rate and Discuss this quote
- Aristotle Rate and Discuss this quote
- Aristotle Rate and Discuss this quote
- Aristotle Rate and Discuss this quote
- Aristotle Rate and Discuss this quote
- Aristotle Rate and Discuss this quote
- Aristotle Rate and Discuss this quote
- Aristotle Rate and Discuss this quote
- Aristotle Rate and Discuss this quote
- Aristotle Rate and Discuss this quote
- Aristotle Rate and Discuss this quote
- Aristotle Rate and Discuss this quote
- Aristotle Rate and Discuss this quote
- Aristotle Rate and Discuss this quote
- Aristotle Rate and Discuss this quote
- Aristotle Rate and Discuss this quote
- Aristotle Rate and Discuss this quote
- Aristotle Rate and Discuss this quote
- Aristotle Rate and Discuss this quote
- Aristotle Rate and Discuss this quote
- Aristotle Rate and Discuss this quote
- Aristotle Rate and Discuss this quote
- Aristotle Rate and Discuss this quote
- Aristotle Rate and Discuss this quote
- Aristotle Rate and Discuss this quote
- Aristotle Rate and Discuss this quote
- Aristotle Rate and Discuss this quote
- Aristotle Rate and Discuss this quote
- Aristotle Rate and Discuss this quote
- Aristotle Rate and Discuss this quote
- Aristotle Rate and Discuss this quote
- Aristotle Rate and Discuss this quote
- Aristotle Rate and Discuss this quote
- Aristotle Rate and Discuss this quote
- Aristotle Rate and Discuss this quote
- Aristotle Rate and Discuss this quote
- Aristotle Rate and Discuss this quote
- Aristotle Rate and Discuss this quote
- Aristotle Rate and Discuss this quote
- Aristotle Rate and Discuss this quote
- Aristotle Rate and Discuss this quote
- Aristotle Rate and Discuss this quote
- Aristotle Rate and Discuss this quote
- Aristotle Rate and Discuss this quote
- Aristotle Rate and Discuss this quote
- Aristotle Rate and Discuss this quote
- Aristotle Rate and Discuss this quote
- Aristotle Rate and Discuss this quote
- Aristotle Rate and Discuss this quote
- Aristotle Rate and Discuss this quote
- Aristotle Rate and Discuss this quote
- Aristotle Rate and Discuss this quote
- Aristotle Rate and Discuss this quote