Aristotle Quotes

Now it is evident that the form of government is best in which every man, whoever he is, can act best and live happily.

If the art of ship-building were in the wood, ships would exist by nature.

Happiness is the highest good

To leave the number of births unrestricted, as is done in most states, inevitably causes poverty among the citizens, and poverty produces crime and faction.

Selfishness doesn't consist in a love to yourself, but in a big degree of such love.

Everything that depends on the action of nature is by nature as good as it can be.

The blood of a goat will shatter a diamond.

For the more limited, if adequate, is always preferable.

The continuum is that which is divisible into indivisibles that are infinitely divisible.

For as the eyes of bats are to the blaze of day, so is the reason in our soul to the things which are by nature most evident of all.

The true friend of the people should see that they be not too poor, for extreme poverty lowers the character of the democracy.

Democracy is the form of government in which the free are rulers, and oligarchy in which the rich; it is only an accident that the free are the many and the rich are the few.

Quid quid movetur ab alio movetur"(nothing moves without having been moved).

For imagining lies within our power whenever we wish . . . but in forming opinons we are not free . . .

Man first begins to philosophize when the necessities of life are supplied.

Those who believe 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 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.

If men think that a ruler is religious and has a reverence for the Gods, they are less afraid of suffering injustice at his hands.

Happiness is at once the best, the noblest, and the pleasantest of things.

Hence poetry is something more philosophic and of graver import than history, since its statements are of the nature rather of universals, whereas those of history are singulars.

The ridiculous is produced by any defect that is unattended by pain, or fatal consequences; thus, an ugly and deformed countenance does not fail to cause laughter, if it is not occasioned by pain.

One has no friend who has many friends.

Anything whose presence or absence makes no discernible difference is no essential part of the whole.

When Pleasure is at the bar the jury is not impartial.

In all things which have a plurality of parts, and which are not a total aggregate but a whole of some sort distinct from the parts, there is some cause.

The line has magnitude in one way, the plane in two ways, and the solid in three ways, and beyond these there is no other magnitude because the three are all.

It is evident, then, that there is a sort of education in which parents should train their sons, not as being useful or necessary, but because it is liberal or noble.

Comedy has had no history, because it was not at first treated seriously.

No one finds fault with defects which are the result of nature.

Prosperity makes friends and adversity tries them. A true friend is one soul in two bodies

It is the activity of the intellect that constitutes complete human happiness - provided it be granted a complete span of life, for nothing that belongs to happiness can be incomplete.

The souls ability to nourish itself lies in the heart.

Friendship also seems to be the bond that hold communities together.

[I]t is rather the case that we desire something because we believe it to be good than that we believe a thing to be good because we desire it. It is the thought that starts things off.

The good citizen need not of necessity possess the virtue which makes a good man.

A period may be defined as a portion of speech that has in itself a beginning and an end, being at the same time not too big to be taken in at a glance

Now all orators effect their demonstrative proofs by allegation either of enthymems or examples, and, besides these, in no other way whatever.

Temperance is a mean with regard to pleasures.

Men cling to life even at the cost of enduring great misfortune.

... a science must deal with a subject and its properties.

A constitution is the arrangement of magistracies in a state, especially of the highest of all. The government is everywhere sovereign in the state, and the constitution is in fact the government.

A man can make up his mind quickly when he has only a little to make up.

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

Men come together in cities in order to live: they remain together in order to live the good life

Madness is badness of spirit, when one seeks profit from all sources.

Boundaries don't protect rivers, people do.

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

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

A body in motion can maintain this motion only if it remains in contact with a mover.

A brave man is clear in his discourse, and keeps close to truth.