Other References:
Aristotle Biography
Internet search for Aristotle
Find Aristotle on Amazon
 |
Home | Authors | Topics | Quote of the Day |
|
Quotations by Aristotle 142 Found Born: Sunday, December 31, 1899 A constitution is the arrangement of magistracies in a state. A friend to all is a friend to none. A great city is not to be confounded with a populous one. A sense is what has the power of receiving into itself the sensible forms of things without the matter, in the way in which a piece of wax takes on the impress of a signet-ring without the iron or gold. A tragedy is a representation of an action that is whole and complete and of a certain magnitude. A whole is what has a beginning and middle and end. A true friend is one soul in two bodies. A tyrant must put on the appearance of uncommon devotion to religion. Subjects are less apprehensive of illegal treatment from a ruler whom they consider god-fearing and pious. On the other hand, they do less easily move against him, believing that he has the gods on his side. All human actions have one or more of these seven causes: chance, nature, compulsions, habit, reason, passion, desire. All men by nature desire knowledge. All paid jobs absorb and degrade the mind. All virtue is summed up in dealing justly. Anybody can become angry - that is easy, but to be angry with the right person and to the right degree and at the right time and for the right purpose, and in the right way - that is not within everybody's power and is not easy. At his best, man is the noblest of all animals; separated from law and justice he is the worst. Bad men are full of repentance. Bashfulness is an ornament to youth, but a reproach to old age. Both oligarch and tyrant mistrust the people, and therefore deprive them of their arms. Bring your desires down to your present means. Increase them only when your increased means permit. Change in all things is sweet. Character may almost be called the most effective means of persuasion. Courage is a mean with regard to fear and confidence. Courage is the first of human qualities because it is the quality which guarantees the others. 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. Democracy is when the indigent, and not the men of property, are the rulers. 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. Dignity does not consist in possessing honors, but in deserving them. Education is an ornament in prosperity and a refuge in adversity. Education is the best provision for old age. Even when laws have been written down, they ought not always to remain unaltered. Every art and every inquiry, and similarly every action and choice, is thought to aim at some good; and for this reason the good has rightly been declared to be that at which all things aim. 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. 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. Fear is pain arising from the anticipation of evil. For as the eyes of bats are to the blaze of day, so is the reason in our soul to the things which are by nature most evident of all. For one swallow does not make a summer, nor does one day; and so too one day, or a short time, does not make a man blessed and happy. For though we love both the truth and our friends, piety requires us to honor the truth first. Friendship is a single soul dwelling in two bodies. Friendship is essentially a partnership. Good habits formed at youth make all the difference. Happiness depends upon ourselves. He who can be, and therefore is, another's, and he who participates in reason enough to apprehend, but not to have, is a slave by nature. He who hath many friends hath none. He who is to be a good ruler must have first been ruled. He who is unable to live in society, or who has no need because he is sufficient for himself, must be either a beast or a god. Hence poetry is something more philosophic and of graver import than history, since its statements are rather of the nature of universals, whereas those of history are singulars. Homer has taught all other poets the art of telling lies skillfully. Hope is a waking dream. Hope is the dream of a waking man. I count him braver who overcomes his desires than him who conquers his enemies; for the hardest victory is over self. I have gained this from philosophy: that I do without being commanded what others do only from fear of the law. 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 government to the utmost.
|
|
|