Aristotle Quotes

Aristotle

Profession : Philosopher

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

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

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

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

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

Men are swayed more by fear than by reverence.

Aristotle

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

Aristotle

A constitution is the arrangement of magistracies in a state.

Aristotle

Misfortune shows those who are not really friends.

Aristotle

The true and the approximately true are apprehended by the same faculty; it may also be noted that men have a sufficient natural instinct for what is true, and usually do arrive at the truth. Hence the man who makes a good guess at truth is likely to make a good guess at probabilities.

Aristotle

Piety requires us to honor truth above our friends.

Aristotle

In constructing the plot and working it out with the proper diction, the poet should place the scene, as far as possible, before his eyes. In this way, seeing everything with the utmost vividness, as if he were a spectator of the action, he will discover what is in keeping with it, and be most unlikely to overlook inconsistencies.

Aristotle

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

Aristotle

The eyes of some persons are large, others small, and others of a moderate size; the last-mentioned are the best. And some eyes are projecting, some deep-set, and some moderate, and those which are deep-set have the most acute vision in all animals; the middle position is a sign of the best disposition.

Aristotle

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

Aristotle

The beginning of reform is not so much to equalize property as to train the noble sort of natures not to desire more, and to prevent the lower from getting more.

Aristotle

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

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.

Aristotle

Whether if soul did not exist time would exist or not, is a question that may fairly be asked; for if there cannot be someone to count there cannot be anything that can be counted, so that evidently there cannot be number; for number is either what has been, or what can be, counted.

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