Aristotle Quotes and Quotation

• I count him braver who overcomes his desires than him who conquers his enemies; for the hardest victory is over self.
  • Variant: I count him braver who overcomes his desires than him who overcomes his enemies.
  • Quoted in Florilegium by Joannes Stobaeus

• In all things of nature there is something of the marvelous.
  • Parts of Animals

• Misfortune shows those who are not really friends.
  • Eudemian Ethics

• Time crumbles things; everything grows old under the power of Time and is forgotten through the lapse of Time.
  • Physics

Rhetoric

• A likely impossibility is always preferable to an unconvincing possibility.
  • Variant: Probable impossibilities are to be preferred to improbable possibilities.

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

• Evil draws men together.

• It is simplicity that makes the uneducated more effective than the educated when addressing popular audiences.

• The book is on the table.
  • (commentary on the significance of this statement, to the extent that it might have been used by Aristotle in his rhetorical arguments is currently insufficient.)

Politics

• "Both oligarch and tyrant mistrust the people, and therefore deprive them of their arms."
  • "Politics"

• A state is not a mere society, having a common place, established for the prevention of mutual crime and for the sake of exchange... Political society exists for the sake of noble actions, and not of mere companionship.

• Again, men in general desire the good, and not merely what their fathers had.

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

• 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.

• 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 the government to the utmost.

• Inferiors revolt in order that they may be equal, and equals revolt that they may be superior.

• Man, when perfected, is the best of animals, but when separated from law and justice, he is the worst of alI.

• It is the nature of desire not to be satisfied, and most men live only for the gratification of it.

• Law is order, and good law is good order.

• "... Let us then enunciate the functions of a state and we shall easily elicit what we want: First there must be food; secondly, arts for life requires many instruments; thirdly, there must be arms, for the members of a community have need of them, and in their own hands, too, in order to maintain authority both against disobedient subjects and against external assailants ..."

• Man is by nature a political animal.

• Men . . . are easily induced to believe that in some wonderful manner everybody will become everybody's friend, especially when some one is heard denouncing the evils now existing in states, suits about contracts, convictions for perjury, flatteries of rich men and the like, which are said to arise out of the possession of private property. These evils, however, are due to a very different cause— the wickedness of human nature.

• Nature does nothing uselessly.

• That judges of important offices should hold office for life is not a good thing, for the mind grows old as well as the body.

• The basis of a democratic state is liberty.

• They should rule who are able to rule best.

• Well begun is half done.
  • (quoting a proverb)''

Metaphysics

• All men by nature desire knowledge.
  • Variant: All men by nature desire to know.

• Those who assert that the mathematical sciences say nothing of the beautiful or the good are in error. For these sciences say and prove a great deal about them; if they do not expressly mention them, but prove attributes which are their results or definitions, it is not true that they tell us nothing about them. The chief forms of beauty are order and symmetry and definiteness, which the mathematical sciences demonstrate in a special degree.

Nicomachean Ethics (c. 325 BC)

• For the things we have to learn before we can do them, we learn by doing them.

• It is not always the same thing to be a good man and a good citizen.

• It is possible to fail in many ways...while to succeed is possible only in one way.

• One swallow does not make a summer.

• Piety requires us to honor truth above our friends.

• To be conscious that we are perceiving or thinking is to be conscious of our own existence.

• To enjoy the things we ought and to hate the things we ought has the greatest bearing on excellence of character.

• We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.

• The vices respectively fall short of or exceed what is right in both passions and actions, while virtue both finds and chooses that which is intermediate.

• We make war that we may live in peace.
  • Variant: We give up leisure in order that we may have leisure, just as we go to war in order that we may have peace.

• We must as second best...take the least of the evils.

• With regard to excellence, it is not enough to know, but we must try to have and use it.

• Without friends no one would choose to live, though he had all other goods.

• Young people are in a condition like permanent intoxication, because youth is sweet and they are growing.

Lives of Eminent Philosophers

• Education is the best provision for old age.

• Hope is a waking dream.

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

• Liars when they speak the truth are not believed.

• To the query, "What is a friend?" his reply was "A single soul dwelling in two bodies."
  • Variants: Friendship is a single soul dwelling in two bodies.
    A true friend is one soul in two bodies.
    Love is composed of a single soul inhabiting two bodies.
    What is a friend? A single soul dwelling in two bodies.

Attributed:

• A friend is a second self.

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

• A tyrant must put on the appearance of uncommon devotion to religion. Subjects are less apprehensive of illegal treatment from a ruler whom they consider god-fearing and pious. On the other hand, they do less easily move against him, believing that he has the gods on his side.

• All human actions have one or more of these seven causes: chance, nature, compulsion, habit, reason, passion, and desire.

• All paid jobs absorb and degrade the mind.

• All virtue is summed up in dealing justly.

• 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.

• As a rock on the seashore he standeth firm, and the dashing of the waves disturbeth him not. He raiseth his head like a tower on a hill, and the arrows of fortune drop at his feet. In the instant of danger, the courage of his heart sustaineth him; and the steadiness of his mind beareth him out.

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

• Bad men are full of repentance.

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

• Between friends there is no need of justice.

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

• Change in all things is sweet.

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

• 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.

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

• 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.

• Dignity does not consist in possessing honors, but in deserving them.
  • Variants: Dignity does not come in possessing honors, but in deserving them.
    Dignity consists not in possessing honors, but in the consciousness that we deserve them.

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

• Education is the best provision for old age.
  • Variant: Education is the best provision for the journey to old age.

• Equality consists in the same treatment of similar persons.

• Fear is pain arising from the anticipation of evil.

• For the things we have to learn before we can do them, we learn by doing them.

• For what is the best choice, for each individual is the highest it is possible for him to achieve.

• Friendship is essentially a partnership.

• Great men are always of a nature originally melancholy.

• Happiness depends upon ourselves.

• Happiness is a sort of action.

• Homer has taught all other poets the art of telling lies skillfully.
  • Variant: It is Homer who has chiefly taught other poets the art of telling lies skillfully.

• Hope is a waking dream.

• Humor is the only test of gravity, and gravity of humor; for a subject which will not bear raillery is suspicious, and a jest which will not bear serious examination is false wit.

• 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.

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

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

• 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.

• In the arena of human life the honours and rewards fall to those who show their good qualities.

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

• It is easy to perform a good action, but not easy to acquire a settled habit of performing such actions.

• It is in justice that the ordering of society is centered.

• 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.

• It is the mark of an instructed mind to rest satisfied with the degree of precision which the nature of the subject admits and not to seek exactness when only an approximation of the truth is possible.

• It is unbecoming for young men to utter maxims.

• Man perfected by society is the best of all animals; he is the most terrible of all when he lives without law, and without justice.

• Melancholy men are of all others the most witty.

• Men acquire a particular quality by constantly acting a particular way... you become just by performing just actions, temperate by performing temperate actions, brave by performing brave actions.
  • Variant: 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.

• Men create gods after their own image, not only with regard to their form but with regard to their mode of life.

• Most people would rather give than get affection.

• Mothers are fonder than fathers of their children because they are more certain they are their own.
  • Variant: This is the reason why mothers are more devoted to their children than fathers: it is that they suffer more in giving them birth and are more certain that they are their own.

• My best friend is the man who in wishing me well wishes it for my sake.
  • Variant: The best friend is the man who in wishing me well wishes it for my sake.

• No excellent soul is exempt from a mixture of madness.
  • Variants: No great genius has ever existed without some touch of madness.
    There is no great genius without a mixture of madness.
    There was never a genius without a tincture of madness.

• No notice is taken of a little evil, but when it increases it strikes the eye.

• No one would choose a friendless existence on condition of having all the other things in the world.
  • Variants: Without friends no one would choose to live, though he had all other goods.
    Without friends, no one would want to live, even if he had all other goods.

• Of all the varieties of virtues, liberalism is the most beloved.

• Personal beauty is a greater recommendation than any letter of reference.

• Pleasure in the job put perfection in the work.

• Poetry is finer and more philosophical than history; for poetry expresses the universal, and history only the particular.

• Politicians also have no leisure, because they are always aiming at something beyond political life itself, power and glory, or happiness.

• Poverty is the parent of revolution and crime.

• Republics decline into democracies and democracies degenerate into despotisms.

• Strange that the vanity which accompanies beauty— excusable, perhaps, when there is such great beauty, or at any rate understandable— should persist after the beauty was gone.

• Suffering becomes beautiful when anyone bears great calamities with cheerfulness, not through insensibility but through greatness of mind.

• That in the soul which is called the mind is, before it thinks, not actually any real thing.

• The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance.

• The aim of the wise is not to secure pleasure, but to avoid pain.

• The appropriate age for marriage is around eighteen for girls and thirty-seven for men.

• The educated differ from the uneducated as much as the living from the dead.

• The end of labor is to gain leisure.

• The generality of men are naturally apt to be swayed by fear rather than reverence, and to refrain from evil rather because of the punishment that it brings than because of its own foulness.
  • Variant: Men are swayed more by fear than by reverence.

• The gods too are fond of a joke.

• The good of man must be the end of the science of politics.

• The greatest virtues are those which are most useful to other persons.

• The ideal man bears the accidents of life with dignity and grace, making the best of circumstances.

• The law is reason, free from passion.

• The least initial deviation from the truth is multiplied later a thousandfold.

• The moral virtues, then, are produced in us neither by nature nor against nature. Nature, indeed, prepares in us the ground for their reception, but their complete formation is the product of habit.

• The more thou dost advance, the more thy feet pitfalls will meet. The Path that leadeth on is lighted by one fire— the light of daring burning in the heart. The more one dares, the more he shall obtain. The more he fears, the more that light shall pale— and that alone can guide.

• 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 only stable state is the one in which all men are equal before the law.

• 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 ultimate value of life depends upon awareness and the power of contemplation rather than upon mere survival.

• The virtue of justice consists in moderation, as regulated by wisdom.

• The wise man does not expose himself needlessly to danger, since there are few things for which he cares sufficiently; but he is willing, in great crises, to give even his life— knowing that under certain conditions it is not worthwhile to live.

• The worst form of inequality is to try to make unequal things equal.

• They [the young] have exalted notions, because they have not been humbled by life or learned its necessary limitations; moreover, their hopeful disposition makes them think themselves equal to great things— and that means having exalted notions. They would always rather do noble deeds than useful ones: Their lives are regulated more by moral feeling than by reasoning— all their mistakes are in the direction of doing things excessively and vehemently. They overdo everything— they love too much, hate too much, and the same with everything else.

• Those who educate children well are more to be honored than parents, for these only gave life, those the art of living well.

• Those who excel in virtue have the best right of all to rebel, but then they are of all men the least inclined to do so.

• Thou wilt find rest from vain fancies if thou doest every act in life as though it were thy last.

• To give a satisfactory decision as to the truth it is necessary to be rather an arbitrator than a party to the dispute.

• To perceive is to suffer.

• To run away from trouble is a form of cowardice and, while it is true that the suicide braves death, he does it not for some noble object but to escape some ill.

• We are what we repeatedly do.

• We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.

• We become just by performing just action, temperate by performing temperate actions, brave by performing brave action.

• We live in deeds, not years: In thoughts not breaths; In feelings, not in figures on a dial. We should count time by heart throbs. He most lives Who thinks most, feels the noblest, acts the best.

• We must no more ask whether the soul and body are one than ask whether the wax and the figure impressed on it are one.

• We praise a man who feels angry on the right grounds and against the right persons and also in the right manner at the right moment and for the right length of time.

• What it lies in our power to do, it lies in our power not to do.

• What the statesman is most anxious to produce is a certain moral character in his fellow citizens, namely a disposition to virtue and the performance of virtuous actions.

• Wicked men obey from fear; good men, from love.

• Wishing to be friends is quick work, but friendship is a slow ripening fruit.

• Wit is educated insolence.

• You will never do anything in this world without courage. It is the greatest quality of the mind next to honor.

• Youth is easily deceived because it is quick to hope.

Possible Misattribution: