Quotes by Aristotle




Aristotle (384 BCE - March 7, 322 BCE) was an ancient Greek philosopher, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. He wrote on diverse subjects, including physics, poetry, biology and zoology, logic, rhetoric, politics and government, and ethics. Along with Socrates and Plato, Aristotle was one of the most influential of ancient Greek philosophers. They transformed Presocratic Greek philosophy into the foundations of Western philosophy as we know it. Some consider Plato and Aristotle to have founded two of the most important schools of Ancient philosophy; others consider Aristotelianism as a development and concretization of Plato's insights..

"Hope is the dream of a waking man."

Aristotle on hope
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"Either a beast or a god."

Aristotle on humankind
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"Man is by nature a political animal."

Aristotle on humankind
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"The secret to humor is surprise."

Aristotle on humor
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"No excellent soul is exempt from a mixture of madness."

Aristotle on insanity
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"The virtue of justice consists in moderation, as regulated by wisdom."

Aristotle on justice    Share

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"The law is reason, free from passion."

Aristotle on law and lawyers
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"The end of labor is to gain leisure."

Aristotle on leisure
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"We give up leisure in order that we may have leisure, just as we go to war in order that we may have peace."

Aristotle on leisure
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"It is Homer who has chiefly taught other poets the art of telling lies skillfully."

Aristotle on lies and lying
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"The energy of the mind is the essence of life."

Aristotle on life
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"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."

Aristotle on anger
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"Anyone can become angry -- that is easy. But to be angry with the right person, to the right degree, at the right time, for the right purpose, and in the right way -- this is not easy."

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

Aristotle on animals
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"Wicked men obey from fear; good men, from love."

Aristotle on love
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"Love is composed of a single soul inhabiting two bodies."

Aristotle on love
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"No great genius has ever existed without some touch of madness."

Aristotle on madness
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"Memory is the scribe of the soul."

Aristotle on memory
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"So it is naturally with the male and the female; the one is superior, the other inferior; the one governs, the other is governed; and the same rule must necessarily hold good with respect to all mankind."

Aristotle on women    Share

"The most perfect political community must be amongst those who are in the middle rank, and those states are best instituted wherein these are a larger and more respectable part, if possible, than both the other; or, if that cannot be, at least than either of them separate."

Aristotle on middle class    Share

"It is better to rise from life as from a banquet -- neither thirsty nor drunken."

Aristotle on moderation
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"It's best to rise from life like a banquet, neither thirsty or drunken."

Aristotle on moderation    Share

"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."

Aristotle on morality
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"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."

Aristotle on morality
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"All men by nature desire to know."

Aristotle on nature
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"Nature does nothing uselessly."

Aristotle on nature
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"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."

Aristotle on parents and parenting
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"The aim of the wise is not to secure pleasure, but to avoid pain."

Aristotle on pleasure
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"Poetry is finer and more philosophical than history; for poetry expresses the universal, and history only the particular."

Aristotle on poetry and poets
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"Homer has taught all other poets the are of telling lies skillfully."

Aristotle on poetry and poets    Share

"Therefore, the good of man must be the end of the science of politics."

Aristotle on politics    Share

"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."

Aristotle on politics    Share

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

Aristotle on beauty
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"Beauty depends on size as well as symmetry. No very small animal can be beautiful, for looking at it takes so small a portion of time that the impression of it will be confused. Nor can any very large one, for a whole view of it cannot be had at once, and so there will be no unity and completeness."

Aristotle on beauty
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"Probable impossibilities are to be preferred to improbable possibilities."

Aristotle on possibilities
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"Poverty is the parent of revolution and crime."

Aristotle on poverty and the poor
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"Praise invariably implies a reference to a higher standard."

Aristotle on praise    Share

"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."

Aristotle on punishment    Share

"For as the interposition of a rivulet, however small, will occasion the line of the phalanx to fluctuate, so any trifling disagreement will be the cause of seditions; but they will not so soon flow from anything else as from the disagreement between virtue and vice, and next to that between poverty and riches."

Aristotle on rebellion    Share

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"Bad men are full of repentance."

Aristotle on repentance    Share

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