Top 1292 Quotes & Sayings by Aristotle - Page 22

It is clear that there is some difference between ends: some ends are energeia [energy], while others are products which are additional to the energeia.

Should a man live underground, and there converse with the works of art and mechanism, and should afterwards be brought up into the open day, and see the several glories of the heaven and earth, he would immediately pronounce them the work of such a Being as we define God to be.

It is evidently equally foolish to accept probable reasoning from a mathematician and to demand from a rhetorician demonstrative proofs.

The good lawgiver should inquire how states and races of men and communities may participate in a good life, and in the happiness which is attainable by them.

How strange it is that Socrates, after having made the children common, should hinder lovers from carnal intercourse only, but should permit love and familiarities between father and son or between brother and brother, than which nothing can be more unseemly, since even without them love of this sort is improper. How strange, too, to forbid intercourse for no other reason than the violence of the pleasure, as though the relationship of father and son or of brothers with one another made no difference.

Of the irrational part of the soul again one division appears to be common to all living things, and of a vegetative nature.

Governments which have a regard to the common interest are constituted in accordance with strict principles of justice, and are therefore true forms; but those which regard only the interest of the rulers are all defective and perverted forms, for they are despotic, whereas a state is a community of freemen.

For well-being and health, again, the homestead should be airy in summer, and sunny in winter. A homestead possessing these qualities would be longer than it is deep; and its main front would face the south.

The state or political community, which is the highest of all, and which embraces all the rest, aims at good in a greater degree than any other, and at the highest good.

But also philosophy is not about perceptible substances they, you see, are prone to destruction.

When the citizens at large administer the state for the common interest, the government is called by the generic name - a constitution.

By 'life,' we mean a thing that can nourish itself and grow and decay.

The laws are, and ought to be, relative to the constitution, and not the constitution to the laws. A constitution is the organization of offices in a state, and determines what is to be the governing body, and what is the end of each community. But laws are not to be confounded with the principles of the constitution; they are the rules according to which the magistrates should administer the state, and proceed against offenders.

The man who confers a favour would rather not be repaid in the same coin.

Anybody can get hit over the head.

The virtue of the good man is necessarily the same as the virtue of the citizen of the perfect state.

Something is infinite if, taking it quantity by quantity, we can always take something outside.

But it is not at all certain that this superiority of the many over the sound few is possible in the case of every people and every large number. There are some whom it would be impossible: otherwise the theory would apply to wild animals- and yet some men are hardly any better than wild animals.

Even if we could suppose the citizen body to be virtuous, without each of them being so, yet the latter would be better, for in the virtue of each the virtue of all is involved.

The government of freemen is nobler and implies more virtue than despotic government. Neither is a city to be deemed happy or a legislator to be praised because he trains his citizens to conquer and obtain dominion over their neighbors, for there is great evil in this.

The proof that the state is a creation of nature and prior to the individual is that the individual, when isolated, is not self-sufficing.

Talent is culture with insolence.

No one chooses what does not rest with himself, but only what he thinks can be attained by his own act.

The most beautiful colors laid on at random, give less pleasure than a black-and-white drawing.

So, if we must give a general formula applicable to all kinds of soul, we must describe it as the first actuality [entelechy] of anatural organized body.

Whether we call it sacrifice, or poetry, or adventure, it is always the same voice that calls.

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 appropriate age for marrige is around eighteen and thirty-seven for man

All men agree that a just distribution must be according to merit in some sense; they do not all specify the same sort of merit, but democrats identify it with freemen, supporters of oligarchy with wealth (or noble birth), and supporters of aristocracy with excellence.

The shape of the heaven is of necessity spherical; for that is the shape most appropriate to its substance and also by nature primary.

Happiness, then, is found to be something perfect and self-sufficient, being the end to which our actions are directed.

If then nature makes nothing without some end in view, nothing to no purpose, it must be that nature has made all of them for the sake of man.