Top 1292 Quotes & Sayings by Aristotle - Page 8

Experience has shown that it is difficult, if not impossible, for a populous state to be run by good laws.

Virtue makes us aim at the right end, and practical wisdom makes us take the right means.

For we do not think that we know a thing until we are acquainted with its primary conditions or first principles, and have carried our analysis as far as its simplest elements.

Even the best of men in authority are liable to be corrupted by passion. We may conclude then that the law is reason without passion, and it is therefore preferable to any individual.

Every man should be responsible to others, nor should anyone be allowed to do just as he pleases; for where absolute freedom is allowed there is nothing to restrain the evil which is inherent in every man. But the principle of responsibility secures that which is the greatest good in states; the right persons rule and are prevented from doing wrong, and the people have their due. It is evident that this is the best kind of democracy, and why? because the people are drawn from a certain class.

Laughter is a bodily exercise, precious to Health

Women should marry when they are about eighteen years of age, and men at seven and thirty; then they are in the prime of life, and the decline in the powers of both will coincide.

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.

The activity of happiness must occupy an entire lifetime; for one swallow does not a summer make.

Remember that time slurs over everything, let all deeds fade, blurs all writings and kills all memories. Exempt are only those which dig into the hearts of men by love.

Education and morals make the good man, the good statesman, the good ruler.

We give up leisure in order that we may have leisure, just as we go to war in order that we may have peace.

Meanness is incurable; it cannot be cured by old age, or by anything else.

Why do men seek honour? Surely in order to confirm the favorable opinion they have formed of themselves.

Music directly imitates the passions or states of the soul...when one listens to music that imitates a certain passion, he becomes imbued withthe same passion; and if over a long time he habitually listens to music that rouses ignoble passions, his whole character will be shaped to an ignoble form.

PLOT is CHARACTER revealed by ACTION.

That which is impossible and probable is better than that which is possible and improbable.

A right election can only be made by those who have knowledge.

The true nature of anything is what it becomes at its highest.

The law is reason unaffected by desire.

There are two distinctive peculiarities by reference to which we characterize the soul (1) local movement and (2) thinking, discriminating, and perceiving. Thinking both speculative and practical is regarded as akin to a form of perceiving; for in the one as well as the other the soul discriminates and is cognizant of something which is.

Sophocles said he drew men as they ought to be, and Euripides as they were.

Happiness is a certain activity of soul in conformity with perfect goodness

Philosophy can make people sick.

Revolutions are effected in two ways, by force and by fraud.

Democracy appears to be safer and less liable to revolution than oligarchy. For in oligarchies there is the double danger of the oligarchs falling out among themselves and also with the people; but in democracies there is only the danger of a quarrel with the oligarchs. No dissension worth mentioning arises among the people themselves. And we may further remark that a government which is composed of the middle class more nearly approximates to democracy than to oligarchy, and is the safest of the imperfect forms of government.

It was through the feeling of wonder that men now and at first began to philosophize.

A flatterer is a friend who is your inferior, or pretends to be so.

To give away money is an easy matter and in any man's power. But to decide to whom to give it and how large and when, and for what purpose and how, is neither in every man's power nor an easy matter.

The Eyes are the organs of temptation, and the Ears are the organs of instruction.

Of the modes of persuasion furnished by the spoken word there are three kinds. The first kind depends on the personal character ofthe speaker; the second on putting the audience into a certain frame of mind; the third on the proof, provided by the words of the speech itself.

Wickedness is nourished by lust.

Those who act receive the prizes.

Beauty depends on size as well as symmetry. No very small animal can be beautiful, for looking at it takes so small a portion of time that the impression of it will be confused. Nor can any very large one, for a whole view of it cannot be had at once, and so there will be no unity and completeness.

The aim of education is to make the pupil like and dislike what he ought....The little human animal will not at first have the right responses. It must be trained to feel pleasure, liking, disgust, and hatred at those things which really are pleasant, likable, disgusting, and hateful.

We are what we continually do.

Definition of tragedy: A hero destroyed by the excess of his virtues

Men are divided between those who are as thrifty as if they would live forever, and those who are as extravagant as if they were going to die the next day.

The wise man knows of all things, as far as possible, although he has no knowledge of each of them in detail

That which is excellent endures.

The saying of Protagoras is like the views we have mentioned; he said that man is the measure of all things, meaning simply that that which seems to each man assuredly is. If this is so, it follows that the same thing both is and is not, and is bad and good, and that the contents of all other opposite statements are true, because often a particular thing appears beautiful to some and ugly to others, and that which appears to each man is the measure

The coward calls the brave man rash, the rash man calls him a coward.

The antidote for fifty enemies is one friend.

The happy life is thought to be one of excellence; now an excellent life requires exertion, and does not consist in amusement.

The true end of tragedy is to purify the passions.

The soul becomes prudent by sitting and being quiet.

Suppose, then, that all men were sick or deranged, save one or two of them who were healthy and of right mind. It would then be the latter two who would be thought to be sick and deranged and the former not!

Youth loves honor and victory more than money.

A man who examines each subject from a philosophical standpoint cannot neglect them: he has to omit nothing, and state the truth about each topic.

The man who is content to live alone is either a beast or a god.

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.

Comedy aims at representing men as worse, Tragedy as better than in actual life.

The pleasures arising from thinking and learning will make us think and learn all the more. 1153a 23

Wicked men obey out of fear. good men, out of love

Some persons hold that, while it is proper for the lawgiver to encourage and exhort men to virtue on moral grounds, in the expectation that those who have had a virtuous moral upbringing will respond, yet he is bound to impose chastisement and penalties on the disobedient and ill-conditioned, and to banish the incorrigible out of the state altogether. For (they argue) although the virtuous man, who guides his life by moral ideals, will be obedient to reason, the base, whose desires are fixed on pleasure, must be chastised by pain, like a beast of burden.

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.

All art, all education, can be merely a supplement to nature.

The ideal man is his own best friend and takes delight in privacy.

Happiness is the utilization of one's talents along lines of excellence.

Money is a guarantee that we may have what we want in the future. Though we need nothing at the moment it insures the possibility of satisfying a new desire when it arises.