Aristotle Quotes

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

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.

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

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

Aristocracy is that form of government in which education and discipline are qualifications for suffrage and office holding.

Every realm of nature is marvelous.

Happiness may be defined as good fortune joined to virtue, or a independence, or as a life that is both agreeable and secure.

The perversions are as follows: of royalty, tyranny; of aristocracy, oligarchy; of constitutional government, democracy.

If the poor, for example, because they are more in number, divide among themselves the property of the rich,- is not this unjust? . . this law of confiscation clearly cannot be just.

It is the active exercise of our faculties in conformity with virtue that causes happiness, and the opposite activities its opposite.

Victory is plesant, not only to those who love to conquer, bot to all; for there is produced an idea of superiority, which all with more or less eagerness desire.

For good is simple, evil manifold.

Everybody loves a thing more if it has cost him trouble: for instance those who have made money love money more than those who have inherited it.

There are some jobs in which it is impossible for a man to be virtuous.

Moral qualities are so constituted as to be destroyed by excess and by deficiency . . .

No man of high and generous spirit is ever willing to indulge in flattery; the good may feel affection for others, but will not flatter them.

That which is common to the greatest number has the least care bestowed upon it

...happiness is an activity and a complete utilization of virtue, not conditionally but absolutely.

If purpose, then, is inherent in art, so is it in Nature also. The best illustration is the case of a man being his own physician, for Nature is like that - agent and patient at once.

A state is an association of similar persons whose aim is the best life possible. What is best is happiness, and to be happy is an active exercise of virtue and a complete employment of it.

If the hammer and the shuttle could move themselves, slavery would be unnecessary.

Equity is that idea of justice which contravenes the written law.

There is more both of beauty and of raison d'etre in the works of nature- than in those of art.

It is not the possessions but the desires of mankind which require to be equalized.

When the looms spin by themselves, we'll have no need for slaves.

The true nature of a thing is the highest it can become.

For those who possess and can wield arms are in a position to decide whether the constitution is to continue or not

It is likely that unlikely things should happen

Poetry demands a man with a special gift for it, or else one with a touch of madness in him.

He then alone will strictly be called brave who is fearless of a noble death, and of all such chances as come upon us with sudden death in their train.

Youth should stay away from all evil, especially things that produce wickedness and ill-will.

The attainment of truth is then the function of both the intellectual parts of the soul. Therefore their respective virtues are those dispositions which will best qualify them to attain truth.

People become house builders through building houses, harp players through playing the harp. We grow to be just by doing things which are just.

A good style must have an air of novelty, at the same time concealing its art.

So that the lover of myths, which are a compact of wonders, is by the same token a lover of wisdom.

The avarice of mankind is insatiable; at one time two obols was pay enough; but now, when this sum has become customary, men always want more and more without end.

For the lesser evil is reckoned a good in comparison with the greater evil, since the lesser evil is rather to be chosen than the greater. .

For often, when one is asleep, there is something in consciousness which declares that what then presents itself is but a dream.

Justice therefore demands that no one should do more ruling than being ruled, but that all should have their turn.

The form of government is a democracy when the free, who are also poor and the majority, govern, and an oligarchy when the rich and the noble govern, they being at the same time few in number.

Justice is Equality...but equality of what?

If everything when it occupies an equal space is at rest, and if that which is in locomotion is always occupying such a space at any moment, the flying arrow is therefore motionless.

Again, the male is by nature superior, and the female inferior; and the one rules, and the other is ruled; this principle, of necessity, extends to all mankind.

My lectures are published and not published; they will be intelligible to those who heard them, and to none beside.

The same things are best both for individuals and for states, and these are the things which the legislator ought to implant in the minds of his citizens.

Rightness in our choice of an end is secured by [Moral] Virtue.

In justice is all virtues found in sum.

So it is clear that the search for what is just is a search for the mean; for the law is the mean.

We do not know a truth without knowing its cause.

That in the soul which is called the mind is, before it thinks, not actually any real thing.