Aristotle Quotes

“Inferiors revolt in order that they may be equal, and equals that they may be superior. Such is the state of mind which creates revolutions.”

“Justice is Equality...but equality of what?”

“Great is the good fortune of a state in which the citizens have a moderate and sufficient property.”

“The happy man . . . will be always or at least most often employed in doing and contemplating the things that are in conformity with virtue. And he will bear changes of fortunes most nobly, and with perfect propriety in every way.”

“The male has more teeth than the female in mankind, and sheep and goats, and swine. This has not been observed in other animals. Those persons which have the greatest number of teeth are the longest lived; those which have them widely separated, smaller, and more scattered, are generally more short lived.”

“Ancient laws remain in force long after the people have the power to change them.”

“Thinking is different from perceiving and is held to be in part imagination, in part judgment”

“A statement is persuasive and credible either because it is directly self-evident or because it appears to be proved from other statements that are so.”

“To appreciate the beauty of a snow flake, it is necessary to stand out in the cold.”

“Music directly represents the passions of the soul. If one listens to the wrong kind of music, he will become the wrong kind of person.”

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

“Life in the true sense is perceiving or thinking.”

“Purpose is a desire for something in our own power, coupled with an investigation into its means.”

“To love someone is to identify with them.”

“Life cannot be lived, and understood, simultaneously.”

“If they do not share equally enjoyments and toils, those who labor much and get little will necessarily complain of those who labor little and receive or consume much. But indeed there is always a difficulty in men living together and having all human relations in common, but especially in their having common property.”

“The ultimate end...is not knowledge, but action. To be half right on time may be more important than to obtain the whole truth too late.”

“If you string together a set of speeches expressive of character, and well finished in point and diction and thought, you will not produce the essential tragic effect nearly so well as with a play which, however deficient in these respects, yet has a plot and artistically constructed incidents.”

“The proof that the state is a creation of nature and prior to the individual is that the individual, when isolated, is not self-sufficing.”

“Now, the causes being four, it is the business of the student of nature to know about them all, and if he refers his problems back to all of them, he will assign the "why" in the way proper to his science-the matter, the form, the mover, that for the sake of which.”

“No tyrant need fear till men begin to feel confident in each other.”

“A speaker who is attempting to move people to thought or action must concern himself with Pathos.”

“...The entire preoccupation of the physicist is with things that contain within themselves a principle of movement and rest.”

“Every community is an association of some kind and every community is established with a view to some good; for everyone always acts in order to obtain that which they think good. But, if all communities aim at some good, the state or political community, which is the highest of all, and which embraces all the rest, aims at good in a greater degree than any other, and at the highest good.”

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