Aristotle Quotes
To know what virtue is is not enough; we must endeavor to possess and to practice it, or in some other manner actually ourselves to become good.
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.
A good style must, first of all, be clear. It must not be mean or above the dignity of the subject. It must be appropriate.
Such an event is probable in Agathon's sense of the word: 'it is probable,' he says, 'that many things should happen contrary to probability.'
Temperance and bravery, then, are ruined by excess and deficiency, but preserved by the mean.
Nature, as we say, does nothing without some purpose; and for thepurpose of making mana political animal she has endowed him alone among the animals with the power of reasoned speech.
There is also a doubt as to what is to be the supreme power in the state: - Is it the multitude? Or the wealthy? Or the good? Or the one best man? Or a tyrant?
Hippodamus, son of Euryphon, a native of Miletus, invented the art of planning and laid out the street plan of Piraeus.
It will contribute towards one's object, who wishes to acquire a facility in the gaining of knowledge, to doubt judiciously.
That judges of important causes should hold office for life is a questionable thing, for the mind grows old as well as the body.
There is no such thing as committing adultery with the right woman, at the right time, and in the right way, for it is simply WRONG.
If you prove the cause, you at once prove the effect; and conversely nothing can exist without its cause.
It is our actions and the soul's active exercise of its functions that we posit (as being Happiness).
...The entire preoccupation of the physicist is with things that contain within themselves a principle of movement and rest.
For it is owing to their wonder that men both now begin and at first began to philosophize... They were pursuing science in order to know, and not for any utilitarian end.
This body is not a home, but an inn; and that only for a short time. Seneca Friendship is composed of a single soul inhabiting two bodies.
A democracy is a government in the hands of men of low birth, no property, and vulgar employments.
...perhaps there is some element of good even in the simple act of living, so long as the evils of existence do not preponderate too heavily.
Life is full of chances and changes, and the most prosperous of men may in the evening of his days meet with great misfortunes.
for we are inquiring not in order to know what virtue is, but in order to become good, since otherwise our inquiry would have been of no use
All food must be capable of being digested, and that what produces digestion is warmth; that is why everything that has soul in it possesses warmth.
We, on the other hand, must take for granted that the things that exist by nature are, either all or some of them, in motion.
Metaphysics involves intuitive knowledge of unprovable starting-points concepts and truth and demonstrative knowledge of what follows from them.
Two characteristic marks have above all others been recognized as distinguishing that which has soul in it from that which has not - movement and sensation.
...in this way the structure of the universe- I mean, of the heavens and the earth and the whole world- was arranged by one harmony through the blending of the most opposite principles.
It is of itself that the divine thought thinks (since it is the most excellent of things), and its thinking is a thinking on thinking.
Neither old people nor sour people seem to make friends easily; for there is little that is pleasant in them.
No one praises happiness as one praises justice, but we call it a 'blessing,' deeming it something higher and more divine than things we praise.
