Aristotle Quotes

The good of man must be the end of the science of politics.
Aristotle
Nicomachean Ethics

All paid jobs absorb and degrade the mind.
Aristotle

Education is the best provision for the journey to old age.
Aristotle

It is unbecoming for young men to utter maxims.
Aristotle

Pleasure in the job puts perfection in the work.
Aristotle


Poverty is the parent of revolution and crime.
Aristotle

To perceive is to suffer.
Aristotle

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

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

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

All men by nature desire knowledge.
Aristotle
Metaphysics

Poetry is something more philosophic and of graver import than history: for poetry tends to express the universal, history the particular.
Aristotle
Poetics

One swallow does not make spring.
Aristotle
Nicomachean Ethics

The gods too are fond of a joke.
Aristotle

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

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

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

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

Misfortune shows those who are not really friends.
Aristotle

Hope is a waking dream.
Aristotle

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

Dignity consists not in possessing honors, but in the consciousness that we deserve them.
Aristotle

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.
Aristotle

In the arena of human life the honors and rewards fall to those who show their good qualities.
What is a friend? One soul inhabiting two bodies.
Aristotle

It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.
Aristotle

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.
Aristotle

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.
Aristotle

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

Liars when they speak the truth are not believed.
Aristotle

I count him braver who overcomes his desires than him who overcomes his enemies.
Aristotle

All men by nature desire knowledge.
Aristotle

It is possible to fail in many ways...while to succeed is possible only in one way.
Aristotle
Nicomachean Ethics

Happiness depends upon ourselves.
Aristotle

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

Law is mind without reason.
Aristotle

Piety requires us to honor truth above our friends.
Aristotle

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

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

We make war that we may live in peace.
Aristotle
Nicomachean Ethics

We must as second best...take the least of the evils.
Aristotle
Nicomachean Ethics

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

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

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

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

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.
Aristotle
Politics

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

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

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
Politics

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.
Aristotle
Politics

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

Law is order, and good law is good order.
Aristotle
Politics

Man is by nature a political animal.
Aristotle
Politics

Nature does nothing without purpose or uselessly.
Aristotle
Politics

The basis of a democratic state is liberty.
Aristotle
Politics

They should rule who are able to rule best.
Aristotle
Politics

Well begun is half done.
Aristotle
Politics

A likely impossibility is always preferable to an unconvincing possibility.
Aristotle
Poetics

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

Evil draws men together.
Aristotle

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

Those that know, do. Those that understand, teach.
Aristotle

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

Plato is dear to me, but dearer still is truth.
Aristotle

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

Wit is educated insolence.
Aristotle

Mothers are fonder than fathers of their children because they are more certain they are their own.
Aristotle

The least deviation from truth will be multiplied later.
Aristotle

Patience is bitter, but its fruit is sweet.
Aristotle

It is well to be up before daybreak, for such habits contribute to health, wealth, and wisdom.
Aristotle

There was never a genius without a tincture of madness.
Aristotle

No tyrant need to fear till men begin to feel confident in each other.
Aristotle

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

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

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

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

The most important things about which all men deliberate and deliberative orators harangue, are five in number, to wit: ways and means, war and peace, the defence of the country, imports and exports, legislation.
Aristotle
Rhetoric

Democracy is when the indigent, and not the men of property, are the rulers.
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 the government to the utmost.
Aristotle
Politics