Aristotle Quotes

Women should marry when they are about eighteen years of age, and men at seven and thirty; then they are in the prime of life, and the decline in the powers of both will coincide.

That which is impossible and probable is better than that which is possible and improbable.

Virtue makes us aim at the right end, and practical wisdom makes us take the right means.

We have divided the Virtues of the Soul into two groups, the Virtues of the Character and the Virtues of the Intellect.

The true end of tragedy is to purify the passions.

All that we do is done with an eye to something else.

All communication must lead to change

Evils draw men together.

Knowing what is right does not make a sagacious man.

For that which has become habitual, becomes as it were natural.

All learning is derived from things previously known.

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

Our actions determine our dispositions.

A good character carries with it the highest power of causing a thing to be believed.

Nothing in life is more necessary than friendship.

Pleasure causes us to do base actions and pain causes us to abstain from doing noble actions.

A democracy when put to the strain grows weak, and is supplanted by Oligarchy.

It is not easy for a person to do any great harm when his tenure of office is short, whereas long possession begets tyranny.

The body is at its best between the ages of thirty and thirty-five.

The same ideas, one must believe, recur in men's minds not once or twice but again and again.

We must not feel a childish disgust at the investigations of the meaner animals. For there is something marvelous in all natural things.

In order to be effective you need not only virtue but also mental strength.

While fiction is often impossible, it should not be implausible.

Excellence or virtue in a man will be the disposition which renders him a good man and also which will cause him to perform his function well.

There is only one condition in which we can imagine managers not needing subordinates, and masters not needing slaves. This condition would be that each (inanimate) instrument could do its own work.

Man, as an originator of action, is a union of desire and intellect.

This world is inescapably linked to the motions of the worlds above. All power in this world is ruled by these options.

Neither by nature, then, nor contrary to nature do the virtues arise in us; rather we are adapted by nature to receive them, and are made perfect by habit.

While the faculty of sensation is dependent upon the body, mind is separable from it

The final cause, then, produces motion through being loved.

The many are more incorruptible than the few; they are like the greater quantity of water which is less easily corrupted than a little.

The rattle is a toy suited to the infant mind, and education is a rattle or toy for children of larger growth.

Perhaps here we have a clue to the reason why royal rule used to exist formerly, namely the difficulty of finding enough men of outstanding virtue.

We deliberate not about ends, but about means.

The principle aim of gymnastics is the education of all youth and not simply that minority of people highly favored by nature.

We become just by the practice of just actions.

Some vices miss what is right because they are deficient, others because they are excessive, in feelings or in actions, while virtue finds and chooses the mean.

It may be argued that peoples for whom philosophers legislate are always prosperous.

In inventing a model we may assume what we wish, but should avoid impossibilities.

Everything is done with a goal, and that goal is "good."

Pay attention to the young, and make them just as good as possible.

I seek to bring forth what you almost already know.

As for the story, whether the poet takes it ready made or constructs it for himself, he should first sketch its general outline, and then fill in the episodes and amplify in detail.

The only stable principle of government is equality according to proportion, and for every man to enjoy his own.

The best friend is he that, when he wishes a person's good, wishes it for that person's own sake.

It is the repeated performance of just and temperate actions that produces virtue.

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.

A whole is that which has a beginning, a middle and an end.

... the science we are after is not about mathematicals either none of them, you see, is separable.

There is simple ignorance, which is the source of lighter offenses, and double ignorance, which is accompanied by a conceit of wisdom.