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Aristotle Quotes
384 BC–322 BC Greece
Aristotle (Ἀριστοτέλης Aristotelēs; 384 BC – 322 BC) was a Greek philosopher and polymath during the Classical period in Ancient Greece. Taught by Plato, he was the teacher of Theophrastus and founder of the Lyceum, the Peripatetic school of philosophy, and the Aristotelian tradition.
Greece Academics Biologists Logicians Mathematicians Also known as: Nicomachean Ethics
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169 quotes
Man is by nature a political animal.
In making a speech one must study three points: first, the means of producing persuasion; second, the language; third the proper arrangement of the various parts of the speech.
Hellenes ... think that as men and animals beget men and animals, so from good men a good man springs. But this is what nature, though she may intend it, cannot always accomplish.
While both the metaphysicist and the physicist draw conclusions from their general doctrines, the one is contented with logical symmetry, the other demands the confrontation with facts.
The populousness of democracies generally preserves them (for number is to democracy in the place of justice based on merit); whereas the preservation of an oligarchy clearly depends on an opposite principle, viz. good order.
What is a friend? A single soul dwelling in two bodies.
Moral excellence comes about as a result of habit.
Virtue, then, is a state of character concerned with choice, lying in a mean ... it is a mean between two vices, that which depends on excess and that which depends on defect.
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.
For the purposes of poetry a convincing impossibility is preferable to an unconvincing possibility.
How God ever brings like to like.
As the man is free, we say, who exists for his own sake and not for another's, so we pursue [philosophy] as the only free science, for it alone exists for its own sake.
There are three lines of life which stand out prominently to view: the life of pleasure, the political life, and the life of reflection.
He who wishes to learn must believe.
Any one can get angry — that is easy — or give or spend money; but to do this to the right person, to the right extent, at the right time, with the right motive, and in the right way, that is not for every one, nor is it easy.
Music directly represents the passion of the soul. If one listens to the wrong kind of music, he will become the wrong kind of person.
Music directly represents the passions of the soul. If one listens to the wrong kind of music, he will become the wrong kind of person.
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.
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.
Man is by nature a civic animal.
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