Aristotle – 97 Quotes

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97 Quotes by Aristotle

 

Hope is a waking dream.

– Aristotle


Wit is educated insolence.

– Aristotle


Nature does nothing in vain.

– Aristotle


Change in all things is sweet.

– Aristotle


Bad men are full of repentance.

– Aristotle


The secret to humor is surprise.

– Aristotle


Happiness depends upon ourselves.

– Aristotle


Hope is the dream of a waking man.

– Aristotle


All men by nature desire knowledge.

– Aristotle


He who hath many friends hath none.

– Aristotle


A friend to all is a friend to none.

– Aristotle


Man is by nature a political animal.

– Aristotle


Quality is not an act, it is a habit.

– Aristotle


We make war that we may live in peace.

– Aristotle


Friendship is essentially a partnership.

– Aristotle


Education is the best provision for old age.

– Aristotle


Men are swayed more by fear than by reverence.

– Aristotle


The energy of the mind is the essence of life.

– Aristotle


It is unbecoming for young men to utter maxims.

– Aristotle


Plato is dear to me, but dearer still is truth.

– Aristotle


Pleasure in the job puts perfection in the work.

– Aristotle


Fear is pain arising from the anticipation of evil.

– Aristotle


Friendship is a single soul dwelling in two bodies.

– Aristotle


Piety requires us to honor truth above our friends.

– Aristotle


Good habits formed at youth make all the difference.

– Aristotle


Courage is a mean with regard to fear and confidence.

– Aristotle


Youth is easily deceived because it is quick to hope.

– Aristotle


There is no great genius without a mixture of madness.

– Aristotle


What is a friend? A single soul dwelling in two bodies.

– Aristotle


He who is to be a good ruler must have first been ruled.

– Aristotle


Love is composed of a single soul inhabiting two bodies.

– Aristotle


A great city is not to be confounded with a populous one.

– Aristotle


The roots of education are bitter, but the fruit is sweet.

– Aristotle


In all things of nature there is something of the marvelous.

– Aristotle


Bashfulness is an ornament to youth, but a reproach to old age.

– Aristotle


What it lies in our power to do, it lies in our power not to do.

– Aristotle


Education is an ornament in prosperity and a refuge in adversity.

– Aristotle


Whosoever is delighted in solitude is either a wild beast or a god.

– Aristotle


Homer has taught all other poets the art of telling lies skillfully.

– Aristotle


The virtue of justice consists in moderation, as regulated by wisdom.

– Aristotle


The one exclusive sign of thorough knowledge is the power of teaching.

– Aristotle


Therefore, the good of man must be the end of the science of politics.

– Aristotle


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

– Aristotle


If one way be better than another, that you may be sure is nature’s way.

– Aristotle


The best friend is the man who in wishing me well wishes it for my sake.

– Aristotle


Personal beauty is a greater recommendation than any letter of reference.

– Aristotle


Men acquire a particular quality by constantly acting in a particular way.

– Aristotle


Democracy is when the indigent, and not the men of property, are the rulers.

– Aristotle


It is best to rise from life as from a banquet, neither thirsty nor drunken.

– Aristotle


Wishing to be friends is quick work, but friendship is a slow ripening fruit.

– Aristotle


The least initial deviation from the truth is multiplied later a thousandfold.

– Aristotle


It is Homer who has chiefly taught other poets the art of telling lies skillfully.

– Aristotle


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

– Aristotle


At his best, man is the noblest of all animals separated from law and justice he is the worst.

– Aristotle


Courage is the first of human qualities because it is the quality which guarantees the others.

– Aristotle


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

– Aristotle


Thou wilt find rest from vain fancies if thou doest every act in life as though it were thy last.

– Aristotle


Mothers are fonder than fathers of their children because they are more certain they are their own.

– Aristotle


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

– Aristotle


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

– Aristotle


The state comes into existence for the sake of life and continues to exist for the sake of good life.

– Aristotle


I have gained this from philosophy: that I do without being commanded what others do only from fear of the law.

– Aristotle


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

– Aristotle


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

– Aristotle


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

– Aristotle


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

– Aristotle


Poetry is finer and more philosophical than history for poetry expresses the universal, and history only the particular.

– Aristotle


Those who excel in virtue have the best right of all to rebel, but then they are of all men the least inclined to do so.

– 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


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.

– Aristotle


For one swallow does not make a summer, nor does one day and so too one day, or a short time, does not make a man blessed and happy.

– 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


He who can be, and therefore is, another’s, and he who participates in reason enough to apprehend, but not to have, is a slave by nature.

– Aristotle


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

– Aristotle


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

– 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


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


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


Perfect friendship is the friendship of men who are good, and alike in excellence for these wish well alike to each other qua good, and they are good in themselves.

– 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


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 clearly better that property should be private, but the use of it common and the special business of the legislator is to create in men this benevolent disposition.

– Aristotle


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

– 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


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


The generality of men are naturally apt to be swayed by fear rather than reverence, and to refrain from evil rather because of the punishment that it brings than because of its own foulness.

– Aristotle


The moral virtues, then, are produced in us neither by nature nor against nature. Nature, indeed, prepares in us the ground for their reception, but their complete formation is the product of habit.

– 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


But if nothing but soul, or in soul mind, is qualified to count, it is impossible for there to be time unless there is soul, but only that of which time is an attribute, i.e. if change can exist without soul.

– Aristotle


In poverty and other misfortunes of life, true friends are a sure refuge. The young they keep out of mischief to the old they are a comfort and aid in their weakness, and those in the prime of life they incite to noble deeds.

– 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


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


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


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


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


Whether if soul did not exist time would exist or not, is a question that may fairly be asked for if there cannot be someone to count there cannot be anything that can be counted, so that evidently there cannot be number for number is either what has been, or what can be, counted.

– Aristotle


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