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Aristotle

124 quotes

“Now the mass of mankind are plainly... choosing a life like that of brute animals... (Bk. 1, Chapter III)”
Aristotle (384–322 BC) said by 322 BC at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The refined and active, on the other hand, prefer honour, which I suppose may be said to be the end of the political life. Yet honour is plainly too superficial to be the object of our search, because it appears to depend rather on those who give than on those who receive it, whereas we feel instinctively that the good must be something proper to a man, which cannot easily be taken from him. (Bk. 1, Chapter III)”
Aristotle (384–322 BC) said by 322 BC at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The third kind of life is the life of contemplation (Bk. 1, Chapter III)”
Aristotle (384–322 BC) said by 322 BC at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“As for the life of money-making, it is one of constraint, and wealth is manifestly not the good of which we are in search, for it is only useful as a means to something else, and for this reason there is less to be said for it than for the ends mentioned before, which are, at any rate, desired for their own sakes. (Bk. 1, Chapter III)”
Aristotle (384–322 BC) said by 322 BC at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“But it is better perhaps to examine next the universal good, and to enquire in what sense the expression is used. Though such an investigation is likely to be difficult, because the persons who have introduced these ideas are our friends. Yet it will perhaps appear the best, and indeed the right course, at least for the preservation of truth, to do away with private feelings, especially as we are philosophers; for since both are dear to us, we are bound to prefer the truth. (Bk. 1, Chapter III)”
Aristotle (384–322 BC) said by 322 BC at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If there is some end of the things we do, which we desire for its own sake, clearly this must be the good. Will not knowledge of it, then, have a great influence on life? Shall we not, like archers who have a mark to aim at, be more likely to hit upon what we should? If so, we must try, in outline at least, to determine what it is.”
Aristotle (384–322 BC) said by 322 BC at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
Aristotle (384–322 BC) said by 322 BC at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The life of money-making is one undertaken under compulsion, and wealth is evidently not the good we are seeking; for it is merely useful and for the sake of something else.”
Aristotle (384–322 BC) said by 322 BC at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“While both are dear, Piety requires us to honor truth above our friends.”
Aristotle (384–322 BC) said by 322 BC at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
Aristotle (384–322 BC) said by 322 BC at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“τὸ μὲν γὰρ ἥδεσθαι τῶν ψυχικῶν, ἑκάστῳ δ᾽ ἐστὶν ἡδὺ πρὸς ὃ λέγεται φιλοτοιοῦτος... Τοῖς μὲν οὖν πολλοῖς τὰ ἡδέα μάχεται διὰ τὸ μὴ φύσει τοιαῦτ᾽ εἶναι, τοῖς δὲ φιλοκάλοις ἐστὶν ἡδέα τὰ φύσει ἡδέα: τοιαῦται δ᾽ αἱ κατ᾽ ἀρετὴν πράξεις... Ἄριστον ἄρα καὶ κάλλιστον καὶ ἥδιστον ἡ εὐδαιμονία, καὶ οὐ διώρισται ταῦτα κατὰ τὸ Δηλιακὸν ἐπίγραμμα: “κάλλιστον τὸ δικαιότατον, λῷστον δ᾽ ὑγιαίνειν: ἥδιστον δὲ πέφυχ᾽ οὗ τις ἐρᾷ τὸ τυχεῖν.”
Aristotle (384–322 BC) said by 322 BC at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
Aristotle (384–322 BC) said by 322 BC at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Book I, 1099b.22: Quoted in Oxford Dictionary of Scientific Quotations (2005), 21:8.
“The truly good and wise man will bear all kinds of fortune in a seemly way, and will always act in the noblest manner that the circumstances allow.”
Aristotle (384–322 BC) said by 322 BC at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“For the things we have to learn before we can do, we learn by doing.”
Aristotle (384–322 BC) said by 322 BC at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Book II, 1103a.33: Cited in: Oxford Dictionary of Scientific Quotations (2005), 21:9
“For legislators make the citizens good by forming habits in them, and this is the wish of every legislator, and those who do not effect it miss their mark, and it is in this that a good constitution differs from a bad one.”
Aristotle (384–322 BC) said by 322 BC at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“.... In a word, acts of any kind produce habits or characters of the same kind. Hence we ought to make sure that our acts are of a certain kind; for the resulting character varies as they vary. It makes no small difference, therefore, whether a man be trained in his youth up in this way or that, but a great difference, or rather all the difference.”
Aristotle (384–322 BC) said by 322 BC at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
Aristotle (384–322 BC) said by 322 BC at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Again, it is possible to fail in many ways (for evil belongs to the class of the unlimited ... and good to that of the limited), while to succeed is possible only in one way (for which reason also one is easy and the other difficult—to miss the mark easy, to hit it difficult); for these reasons also, then, excess and defect are characteristic of vice, and the mean of virtue; For men are good in but one way, but bad in many.”
Aristotle (384–322 BC) said by 322 BC at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
Aristotle (384–322 BC) said by 322 BC at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
Aristotle (384–322 BC) said by 322 BC at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“οὕτω δὲ καὶ τὸ μὲν ὀργισθῆναι παντὸς καὶ ῥᾴδιον, καὶ τὸ δοῦναι ἀργύριον καὶ δαπανῆσαι· τὸ δ᾽ ᾧ καὶ ὅσον καὶ ὅτε καὶ οὗ ἕνεκα καὶ ὥς, οὐκέτι παντὸς οὐδὲ ῥᾴδιον”
Aristotle (384–322 BC) said by 322 BC at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted in The Child: At Home and School (1944) by Edith M. Leonard, Lillian E. Miles, and Catherine S. Van der Kar, p. 203
“κατὰ τὸν δεύτερον, φασί, πλοῦν τὰ ἐλάχιστα ληπτέον τῶν κακῶν”
Aristotle (384–322 BC) said by 322 BC at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Therefore only an utterly senseless person can fail to know that our characters are the result of our conduct.”
Aristotle (384–322 BC) said by 322 BC at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“What it lies in our power to do, it lies in our power not to do.”
Aristotle (384–322 BC) said by 322 BC at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“μεταβολὴ δὲ πάντων γλυκύ”
Aristotle (384–322 BC) said by 322 BC at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“ἄνευ γὰρ φίλων οὐδεὶς ἕλοιτ᾽ ἂν ζῆν, ἔχων τὰ λοιπὰ ἀγαθὰ πάντα”
Aristotle (384–322 BC) said by 322 BC at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Ηθικά Νικομάχεια, 1155a 5, μετάφρ. Β. Μοσκόβης, Αριστοτέλους Ηθικά Νικομάχεια Ι–ΙΙ (1993)
Also quoted by: Αριστοτέλης (el)
“When people are friends, they have no need of justice, but when they are just, they need friendship in addition.”
Aristotle (384–322 BC) said by 322 BC at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The best friend is he that, when he wishes a person's good, wishes it for that person's own sake.”
Aristotle (384–322 BC) said by 322 BC at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
Aristotle (384–322 BC) said by 322 BC at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Misfortune shows those who are not really friends.”
Aristotle (384–322 BC) said by 322 BC at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
Aristotle (384–322 BC) said by 322 BC at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Rhetoric is the counterpart of Dialectic. Both alike are concerned with such things as come, more or less, within the general ken of all men and belong to no definite science. Accordingly, all men make use, more or less, of both; for to a certain extent all men attempt to discuss statements and to maintain them, to defend themselves and to attack others.”
Aristotle (384–322 BC) said by 322 BC at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 reason when the use of reason is more distinctive of a human being than the use of his limbs.”
Aristotle (384–322 BC) said by 322 BC at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Evils draw men together.”
Aristotle (384–322 BC) said by 322 BC at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Thus every action must be due to one or other of seven causes: chance, nature, compulsion, habit, reasoning, anger, or appetite.”
Aristotle (384–322 BC) said by 322 BC at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Wit is cultured insolence.”
Aristotle (384–322 BC) said by 322 BC at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It is simplicity that makes the uneducated more effective than the educated when addressing popular audiences.”
Aristotle (384–322 BC) said by 322 BC at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A tragedy, then, is the imitation of an action that is serious and also, as having magnitude, complete in itself; in language ... not in a narrative form; with incidents arousing pity and fear, wherewith to accomplish its catharsis of such emotions.”
Aristotle (384–322 BC) said by 322 BC at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A whole is that which has beginning, middle, and end.”
Aristotle (384–322 BC) said by 322 BC at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“διὸ καὶ φιλοσοφώτερον καὶ σπουδαιότερον ποίησις ἱστορίας ἐστίν: ἡ μὲν γὰρ ποίησις μᾶλλον τὰ καθόλου, ἡ δ᾽ ἱστορία τὰ καθ᾽ ἕκαστον λέγει.”
Aristotle (384–322 BC) said by 322 BC at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“διὸ εὐφυοῦς ἡ ποιητική ἐστιν ἢ μανικοῦ”
Aristotle (384–322 BC) said by 322 BC at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
Aristotle (384–322 BC) said by 322 BC at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Also quoted by: 亚里士多德 (zh)
“Homer has taught all other poets the art of telling lies skillfully.”
Aristotle (384–322 BC) said by 322 BC at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“For the purposes of poetry a convincing impossibility is preferable to an unconvincing possibility.”
Aristotle (384–322 BC) said by 322 BC at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The roots of education ... are bitter, but the fruit is sweet.”
Aristotle (384–322 BC) said by 322 BC at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I have gained this by philosophy ... I do without being ordered what some are constrained to do by their fear of the law.”
Aristotle (384–322 BC) said by 322 BC at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Liars ... when they speak the truth they are not believed.”
Aristotle (384–322 BC) said by 322 BC at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Hope is the dream of a waking man.”
Aristotle (384–322 BC) said by 322 BC at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A friend is one soul abiding in two bodies.”
Aristotle (384–322 BC) said by 322 BC at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The premises of demonstrative knowledge must be true, primary, immediate, more knowable than and prior to the conclusion, which is further related to them as effect to cause... The premises must be the cause of the conclusion, more knowable than it, and prior to it; its causes, since we possess scientific knowledge of a thing only when we know its cause; prior, in order to be causes; antecedently known, this antecedent knowledge being not our mere understanding of the meaning, but knowledge of the fact as well. Now 'prior' and 'more knowable' are ambiguous terms, for there is a difference between what is prior and more knowable in the order of being and what is prior and knowable to man. I mean that objects nearer to sense are prior and more knowable to man; objects without qualification prior and more knowable are those further from sense. Now the most universal causes are furthest from sense and particular causes are nearest to sense, and they are thus exactly opposed to each other.”
Aristotle (384–322 BC) said by 322 BC at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source