Aristotle Quotes

“All men are alike when asleep.”

“To die, and thus avoid poverty or love, or anything painful, is not the part of a brave man, but rather of a coward; for it is cowardice to avoid trouble, and the suicide does not undergo death because it is honorable, but in order to avoid evil.”

“Obstinate people can be divided into the opinionated, the ignorant, and the boorish.”

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

“Talent is culture with insolence.”

“Men are marked from the moment of birth to rule or be ruled.”

“Human beings are curious by nature.”

“Demonstration is also something necessary, because a demonstration cannot go otherwise than it does, ... And the cause of this lies with the primary premises/principles.”

“The happy life is thought to be one of excellence; now an excellent life requires exertion, and does not consist in amusement.”

“The virtues [moral excellence] therefore are engendered in us neither by nature nor yet in violation of nature; nature gives us the capacity to receive them, and this capacity is brought to maturity by habit.”

“For well-being and health, again, the homestead should be airy in summer, and sunny in winter. A homestead possessing these qualities would be longer than it is deep; and its main front would face the south.”

“When...we, as individuals, obey laws that direct us to behave for the welfare of the community as a whole, we are indirectly helping to promote the pursuit of happiness by our fellow human beings.”

“Property should be in a general sense common, but as a general rule private... In well-ordered states, although every man has his own property, some things he will place at the disposal of his friends, while of others he shares the use of them.”

“In the works of Nature, purpose, not accident, is the main thing.”

“Why is it that all those who have become eminent in philosophy, politics, poetry, or the arts are clearly of an atrabilious temperament and some of them to such an extent as to be affected by diseases caused by black bile?”

“Now property is part of a household, and the acquisition of property part of household-management; for neither life itself nor the good life is possible without a certain minimum supply of the necessities.”

“The character which results from wealth is that of a prosperous fool.”

“Teenagers these days are out of control. They eat like pigs, they are disrespectful of adults, they interrupt and contradict their parents, and they terrorize their teachers.”

“And what has come to prevail in democracies is the very reverse of beneficial, in those, that is, which are regarded as the most democratically run. The reason for this lies in the failure properly to define liberty. For there are two marks by which democracy is thought to be defined: "sovereignty of the majority" and "liberty." "Just" is equated with what is equal, and the decision of the majority as to what is equal is regarded as sovereign; and liberty is seen in terms of doing what one wants.”

“Rising before daylight is also to be commended; it is a healthy habit, and gives more time for the management of the household as well as for liberal studies.”

“There are three things that are the motives of choice and three that are the motives of avoidance; namely, the noble, the expedient, and the pleasant, and their opposites, the base, the harmful, and the painful. Now in respect of all these the good man is likely to go right and the bad to go wrong, but especially in respect of pleasure; for pleasure is common to man with the lower animals, and also it is a concomitant of all the objects of choice, since both the noble and the expedient appear to us pleasant.”

“We must become just be doing just acts.”

“Criticism is something we can avoid easilyby saying nothing, doing nothing,and being nothing.”

“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.”

“Tools may be animate as well as inanimate; for instance, a ship's captain uses a lifeless rudder, but a living man for watch; for a servant is, from the point of view of his craft, categorized as one of its tools. So any piece of property can be regarded as a tool enabling a man to live, and his property is an assemblage of such tools; a slave is a sort of living piece of property; and like any other servant is a tool in charge of other tools.”