Aristotle Quotes About Opinions

• It is our choice of good or evil that determines our character, not our opinion about good or evil.

  Aristotle

  Character, Evil, Choices

  Aristotle (1996). “The Nicomachean Ethics”, p.58, Wordsworth Editions

• If a man of good natural disposition acquires Intelligence [as a whole], then he excels in conduct, and the disposition which previously only resembled Virtue, will now be Virtue in the true sense. Hence just as with the faculty of forming opinions [the calculative faculty] there are two qualities, Cleverness and Prudence, so also in the moral part of the soul there are two qualities, natural virtue and true Virtue; and true Virtue cannot exist without Prudence.

  Aristotle

  Men, Two, Soul

• Phronimos, possessing practical wisdom . But the only virtue special to a ruler is practical wisdom; all the others must be possessed, so it seems, both by rulers and ruled. The virtue of a person being ruled is not practical wisdom but correct opinion; he is rather like a person who makes the pipes, while the ruler is the one who can play them.

  Aristotle

  Play, Political, Special

• Not to get what you have set your heart on is almost as bad as getting nothing at all.

  Aristotle

  Heart, Opinion

  Aristotle (1953). “Ethics: The Nicomachean Ethics”

• Why do men seek honour? Surely in order to confirm the favorable opinion they have formed of themselves.

  Aristotle

  Men, Order, Opinion

  Aristotle (1953). “Ethics: The Nicomachean Ethics”

• Because the rich are generally few in number, while the poor are many, they appear to be antagonistic, and as the one or the other prevails they form the government. Hence arises the common opinion that there are two kinds of government - democracy and oligarchy.

  Aristotle

  Two, Numbers, Government

  Aristotle, (2014). “Complete Works of Aristotle, Volume 2: The Revised Oxford Translation”, p.2050, Princeton University Press

• Also our fellow competitors, who are indeed the people just mentioned - we do not compete with men who lived a hundred centuries ago, or those yet not born, or the dead, or those who dwell near the Pillars of Hercules, or those whom, in our opinion or that of others, we take to be far below us or far above us. So too we compete with those who follow the same ends as ourselves; we compete with our rivals in sport or in love, and generally with those who are after the same things; and it is therefore these whom we are bound to envy beyond all others. Hence the saying.

  Aristotle

  Sports, Men, People

• Opinion involves belief (for without belief in what we opine we cannot have an opinion), and in the brutes though we often find imagination we never find belief.

  Aristotle

  Imagination, Soul, Belief

  Aristotle, Aeterna Press (2015). “On the Soul”, p.67, Aeterna Press

• Hence intellect[ual perception] is both a beginning and an end, for the demonstrations arise from these, and concern them. As a result, one ought to pay attention to the undemonstrated assertions and opinions of experienced and older people, or of the prudent, no less than to demonstrations, for, because the have an experienced eye, they see correctly.

  Aristotle

  Eye, People, Perception

• Some men are just as sure of the truth of their opinions as are others of what they know.

  Aristotle

  Men, Opinion, Knows

  Aristotle (1953). “Ethics: The Nicomachean Ethics”

• Character is determined by choice, not opinion.

  Aristotle

  Character, Choices, Determined

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