Aristotle Quotes

♦ Love is composed of a single soul inhabiting two bodies – Aristotle

♦ Hope is a waking dream – Aristotle

♦ 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 – Aristotle

♦ Friendship is a single soul dwelling in two bodies – Aristotle

♦ A friend to all is a friend to none – Aristotle

♦ We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit – Aristotle

♦ It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it – Aristotle

♦ The roots of education are bitter, but the fruit is sweet – Aristotle

♦ The most perfect political community is one in which the middle class is in control, and outnumbers both of the other classes – Aristotle

♦ My best friend is the man who in wishing me well wishes it for my sake – Aristotle

♦ Those who educate children well are more to be honored than they who produce them; for these only gave them life, those the art of living well – Aristotle

♦ You will never do anything in this world without courage. It is the greatest quality of the mind next to honor – Aristotle

♦ Happiness depends upon ourselves – Aristotle

♦ I count him braver who overcomes his desires than him who conquers his enemies; for the hardest victory is over self – Aristotle

♦ The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance – Aristotle

♦ Democracy is when the indigent, and not the men of property, are the rulers – Aristotle

♦ A true friend is one soul in two bodies – Aristotle

♦ Suffering becomes beautiful when anyone bears great calamities with cheerfulness, not through insensibility but through greatness of mind – Aristotle

♦ Quality is not an act, it is a habit – Aristotle

♦ All human actions have one or more of these seven causes: chance, nature, compulsions, habit, reason, passion, desire – Aristotle

♦ At his best, man is the noblest of all animals; separated from law and justice he is the worst – Aristotle

♦ 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 – Aristotle

♦ Wishing to be friends is quick work, but friendship is a slow ripening fruit – Aristotle

♦ The ultimate value of life depends upon awareness and the power of contemplation rather than upon mere survival – Aristotle

♦ The worst form of inequality is to try to make unequal things equal – Aristotle

♦ Mothers are fonder than fathers of their children because they are more certain they are their own – Aristotle

♦ The aim of the wise is not to secure pleasure, but to avoid pain – Aristotle

♦ The energy of the mind is the essence of life – Aristotle

♦ Jealousy is both reasonable and belongs to reasonable men, while envy is base and belongs to the base, for the one makes himself get good things by jealousy, while the other does not allow his neighbour to have them through envy – Aristotle

♦ No excellent soul is exempt from a mixture of madness – Aristotle

♦ In a democracy the poor will have more power than the rich, because there are more of them, and the will of the majority is supreme – Aristotle

♦ Personal beauty is a greater recommendation than any letter of reference – Aristotle

♦ There is no great genius without a mixture of madness – Aristotle

♦ What it lies in our power to do, it lies in our power not to do – Aristotle

♦ Those that know, do. Those that understand, teach – Aristotle

♦ The law is reason, free from passion – Aristotle

♦ He who hath many friends hath none – Aristotle

♦ Good habits formed at youth make all the difference – Aristotle

♦ Education is an ornament in prosperity and a refuge in adversity – Aristotle

♦ Courage is the first of human qualities because it is the quality which guarantees the others – Aristotle

♦ Whosoever is delighted in solitude is either a wild beast or a god – Aristotle

♦ Fear is pain arising from the anticipation of evil – Aristotle

♦ The soul never thinks without a picture – Aristotle

♦ 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 – Aristotle

♦ Pleasure in the job puts perfection in the work – Aristotle

♦ The ideal man bears the accidents of life with dignity and grace, making the best of circumstances – Aristotle

♦ All paid jobs absorb and degrade the mind – Aristotle

♦ Both oligarch and tyrant mistrust the people, and therefore deprive them of their arms – Aristotle

♦ Change in all things is sweet – Aristotle

♦ Character may almost be called the most effective means of persuasion – Aristotle

♦ The one exclusive sign of thorough knowledge is the power of teaching – Aristotle

♦ Wit is educated insolence – Aristotle

♦ Poetry is finer and more philosophical than history; for poetry expresses the universal, and history only the particular – Aristotle

♦ Youth is easily deceived because it is quick to hope – Aristotle

♦ Republics decline into democracies and democracies degenerate into despotisms – Aristotle

♦ All men by nature desire knowledge – Aristotle

♦ In all things of nature there is something of the marvelous – Aristotle

♦ Bring your desires down to your present means. Increase them only when your increased means permit – Aristotle

♦ Dignity does not consist in possessing honors, but in deserving them – Aristotle

♦ 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 – Aristotle

♦ The secret to humor is surprise – Aristotle

♦ The educated differ from the uneducated as much as the living from the dead – Aristotle

♦ Moral excellence comes about as a result of habit. We become just by doing just acts, temperate by doing temperate acts, brave by doing brave acts – Aristotle

♦ Politicians also have no leisure, because they are always aiming at something beyond political life itself, power and glory, or happiness – Aristotle

♦ Well begun is half done – Aristotle

♦ There was never a genius without a tincture of madness – Aristotle

♦ For though we love both the truth and our friends, piety requires us to honor the truth first – Aristotle

♦ 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 – Aristotle

♦ No one would choose a friendless existence on condition of having all the other things in the world – Aristotle

♦ The greatest virtues are those which are most useful to other persons – Aristotle

♦ Misfortune shows those who are not really friends – Aristotle

♦ Courage is a mean with regard to fear and confidence –  Aristotle

♦ Men create gods after their own image, not only with regard to their form but with regard to their mode of life – Aristotle

♦ We become just by performing just action, temperate by performing temperate actions, brave by performing brave action – Aristotle

♦ The wise man does not expose himself needlessly to danger, since there are few things for which he cares sufficiently; but he is willing, in great crises, to give even his life – knowing that under certain conditions it is not worthwhile to live – Aristotle

♦ 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 – Aristotle

♦ It is just that we should be grateful, not only to those with whose views we may agree, but also to those who have expressed more superficial views; for these also contributed something, by developing before us the powers of thought – Aristotle

♦ To run away from trouble is a form of cowardice and, while it is true that the suicide braves death, he does it not for some noble object but to escape some ill – Aristotle

♦ 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 – Aristotle

♦ 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 – Aristotle

♦ 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 – Aristotle

♦  We praise a man who feels angry on the right grounds and against the right persons and also in the right manner at the right moment and for the right length of time. Aristotle  We praise a man who feels angry on the right grounds and against the right persons and also in the right manner at the right moment and for the right length of time –  Aristotle

♦ 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 – Aristotle

♦ 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 – Aristotle

♦ 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 – Aristotle

♦ The beginning of reform is not so much to equalize property as to train the noble sort of natures not to desire more, and to prevent the lower from getting more – Aristotle