Aristotle Quotes


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

Aristotle (On The Heavens)

Evil brings men together.

Aristotle (Rhetoric)

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

Aristotle (The Nicomachean Ethics, 325 BCE)

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

Aristotle

Educating the mind without educating the heart is no education at all.

Aristotle

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

Aristotle (The Nicomachean Ethics, 325 BCE)

I count him braver who overcomes his desires than him who overcomes his enemies. For the hardest victory is the victory over self.

Aristotle

A flatterer is a friend who is your inferior, or pretends to be so.

Aristotle (The Nicomachean Ethics, 325 BCE)

A likely impossibility is always preferable to an unconvincing possibility.

Aristotle (Rhetoric)

Courage is a mean with regard to fear and confidence.

Aristotle (The Nicomachean Ethics, 325 BCE)

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

Aristotle (The Nicomachean Ethics, 325 BCE)

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

Aristotle

The roots of education are bitter, but the fruit is sweet.

Aristotle

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

Aristotle (Physics)

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

Aristotle (Attributed to Aristotle by Diogenes Laertius in Lives of Eminent Philosopher)

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)

It is in justice that the ordering of society is centered.
Variant: Justice is the fundamental virtue of political society, since the order of society cannot be maintained without law.

Aristotle (Politics)

First, have a definite, clear practical ideal; a goal, an objective. Second, have the necessary means to achieve your ends; wisdom, money, materials, and methods. Third, adjust all your means to that end.

Aristotle

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

Nature flies from the infinite, for the infinite is unending or imperfect, and Nature ever seeks amend.

Aristotle (Generation of Animals)

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

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

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

Variant: These are the reasons, too, why mothers are fonder of their children than fathers; bringing them into the world costs them more pains, and they know better that the children are their own.
Aristotle
(The Nicomachean Ethics, 325 BCE)

It is unbecoming for young men to utter maxims.

Variant: Since for one not so advanced in age to sport maxims is bad taste, just as it is for him to have recourse to fables: and the use of them on subjects about which one is ignorant is silly, and argues a want of education.
Aristotle (Rhetoric)

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

Variant: The only stable principle of government is equality according to proportion, and for every man to enjoy his own.
Aristotle
(Politics)

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 (The Nicomachean Ethics, 325 BCE)

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)

One swallow does not make a summer, nor does one fine day; similarly one day or brief time of happiness does not make a person entirely happy.

Aristotle (The Nicomachean Ethics, 325 BCE)

It is absurd to hold that a man ought to be ashamed of being unable to defend himself with his limbs but not of being unable to defend himself with speech and reason, when the use of reason is more distinctive of a human being than the use of his limbs.

Aristotle (Rhetoric)

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.

Aristotle (Metaphysics)

Aristotle Biography

Born: 384 BCE
Died: 322 BCE

Aristotle was a Greek philosopher. He is considered to be, along with Plato and Socrates, the most important founding figures in Western Philosophy.

Notable Works

Metaphysics
Politics
The Nicomachean Ethics
(325 BCE)
Eudemian Ethics
Poetics
Rhetoric