Aristotle
Books and other Resources about Aristotle
>Aristotle was a Greek philosopher, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. His writings cover many subjects, including physics, metaphysics, poetry, theater, music, logic, rhetoric, politics, government, ethics, biology, and zoology. Together with Plato and Socrates (Plato’s teacher), Aristotle is one of the most important founding figures in Western philosophy. Aristotle’s writings were the first to create a comprehensive system of Western philosophy, encompassing morality and aesthetics, logic and science, politics and metaphysics. His works contain the earliest known formal study of logic, which was incorporated in the late 19th century into modern formal logic.
Famous Quotes Attributed to Aristotle:
A constitution is the arrangement of magistracies in a state.
A friend to all is a friend to none.
A great city is not to be confounded with a populous one.
All human actions have one or more of these seven causes: chance, nature, compulsions, habit, reason, passion, desire.
All men by nature desire knowledge.
All virtue is summed up in dealing justly.
At his best, man is the noblest of all animals; separated from law and justice he is the worst.
Both oligarch and tyrant mistrust the people, and therefore deprive them of their arms.
Bring your desires down to your present means. Increase them only when your increased means permit.
Character may almost be called the most effective means of persuasion.
Courage is the first of human qualities because it is the quality which guarantees the others.
Dignity does not consist in possessing honors, but in deserving them.
Education is an ornament in prosperity and a refuge in adversity.
Education is the best provision for old age.
Fear is pain arising from the anticipation of evil.
Friendship is essentially a partnership.
Good habits formed at youth make all the difference.
Happiness depends upon ourselves.
He who hath many friends hath none.
He who is to be a good ruler must have first been ruled.
I count him braver who overcomes his desires than him who conquers his enemies; for the hardest victory is over self.
I have gained this from philosophy: that I do without being commanded what others do only from fear of the law.
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.
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.
In all things of nature there is something of the marvelous.
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.
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.
It is best to rise from life as from a banquet, neither thirsty nor drunken.
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.
It is just that we should be grateful, not only to those with whose views we may agree, but also to those who have expressed more superficial views; for these also contributed something, by developing before us the powers of thought.
It is not once nor twice but times without number that the same ideas make their appearance in the world.
It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.
Men are swayed more by fear than by reverence.
Men create gods after their own image, not only with regard to their form but with regard to their mode of life.
Misfortune shows those who are not really friends.
Moral excellence comes about as a result of habit. We become just by doing just acts, temperate by doing temperate acts, brave by doing brave acts.
Most people would rather give than get affection.
My best friend is the man who in wishing me well wishes it for my sake.
Nature does nothing in vain.
No great genius has ever existed without some touch of madness.
No one loves the man whom he fears.
Pleasure in the job puts perfection in the work.
Quality is not an act, it is a habit.
Republics decline into democracies and democracies degenerate into despotisms.
Suffering becomes beautiful when anyone bears great calamities with cheerfulness, not through insensibility but through greatness of mind.
The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance.
The beginning of reform is not so much to equalize property as to train the noble sort of natures not to desire more, and to prevent the lower from getting more.
The educated differ from the uneducated as much as the living from the dead.
The end of labor is to gain leisure.
The energy of the mind is the essence of life.
The greatest virtues are those which are most useful to other persons.
The law is reason, free from passion.
The least initial deviation from the truth is multiplied later a thousandfold.
The most perfect political community is one in which the middle class is in control, and outnumbers both of the other classes.
The one exclusive sign of thorough knowledge is the power of teaching.
The roots of education are bitter, but the fruit is sweet.
The secret to humor is surprise.
The soul never thinks without a picture.
The whole is more than the sum of its parts.
The worst form of inequality is to try to make unequal things equal.
The young are permanently in a state resembling intoxication.
Those that know, do. Those that understand, teach.
We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.
We make war that we may live in peace.
What it lies in our power to do, it lies in our power not to do.
Wit is educated insolence.
Without friends no one would choose to live, though he had all other goods.
Youth is easily deceived because it is quick to hope.
