Aristotle Quotes

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Aristotle Quotes & Sayings


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


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


Dignity does not consist in possessing honors, but in deserving them.
- Aristotle


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


All men by nature desire knowledge.
- Aristotle


Even when laws have been written down, they ought not always to remain unaltered.
- 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


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


Bad men are full of repentance.
- Aristotle


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


In making a speech one must study three points: first, the means of producing persuasion; second, the language; third the proper arrangement of the various parts of the speech.
- Aristotle


In nine cases out of ten, a woman had better show more affection than she feels.
- 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


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.
- Aristotle


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


Both oligarch and tyrant mistrust the people, and therefore deprive them of their arms.
- Aristotle


Bring your desires down to your present means.Increase them only when your increased means permit.
- Aristotle


Change in all things is sweet.
- Aristotle


Character may almost be called the most effective means of persuasion.
- Aristotle


Courage is a mean with regard to fear and confidence.
- Aristotle


Education is the best provision for old age.
- 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


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


Hope is a waking dream.
- Aristotle


Hope is the dream of a waking man.
- Aristotle


I count him braver who overcomes his desires than him who conquers his enemies; for the hardest victory is over self.
- Aristotle


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


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


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


A tragedy is a representation of an action that is whole and complete and of a certain magnitude. A whole is what has a beginning and middle and end.
- Aristotle


A true friend is one soul in two bodies.
- Aristotle


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


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


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


A constitution is the arrangement of magistracies in a state.
- 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


Fear is pain arising from the anticipation of evil.
- 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


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


He who hath many friends hath none.
- Aristotle


All paid jobs absorb and degrade the mind.
- Aristotle


All virtue is summed up in dealing justly.
- 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


A friend to all is a friend to none.
- Aristotle


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


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


Friendship is a single soul dwelling in two bodies.
- Aristotle


Friendship is essentially a partnership.
- Aristotle


Good habits formed at youth make all the difference.
- Aristotle


Happiness depends upon ourselves.
- 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


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