Aristotle Quotes - Page 32

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

  Aristotle

  Truth, Honesty, Plato

  Greek original ascribed to Aristotle

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• It is not easy for a person to do any great harm when his tenure of office is short, whereas long possession begets tyranny.

  Aristotle

  Long, Office, Easy

  Aristotle (2016). “Politics”, p.180, Aristotle

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• While fiction is often impossible, it should not be implausible.

  Aristotle

  Book, Fiction, Impossible

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• Perfect friendship is the friendship of men who are good, and alike in excellence; for these wish well alike to each other qua good, and they are good in themselves.

  Aristotle

  Friendship, Men, Perfection

  Aristotle, (2014). “Complete Works of Aristotle, Volume 2: The Revised Oxford Translation”, p.1827, Princeton University Press

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• The sun, moving as it does, sets up processes of change and becoming and decay, and by its agency the finest and sweetest water is every day carried up and is dissolved into vapour and rises to the upper region, where it is condensed again by the cold and so returns to the earth. This, as we have said before, is the regular course of nature.

  Aristotle

  Rain, Moving, Agency

  Catholic Way Publishing, Aristotle, Plato (2015). “The Philosophy Collection [97 Books]”, p.1272, Catholic Way Publishing

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• Wicked men obey for fear, but the good for love.

  Aristotle

  Fear, Men, Wicked

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• The purpose of the present study is not as it is in other inquiries, the attainment of knowledge, we are not conducting this inquiry in order to know what virtue is, but in order to become good, else there would be no advantage in studying it. For that reason, it becomes necessary to examine the problem of our actions and to ask how they are to be performed. For as we have said, the actions determine what kind of characteristics are developed.

  Aristotle

  Order, Would Be, Purpose

  Aristotle (1962). “Nicomachean Ethics”, MacMillan Publishing Company

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• Great and frequent reverses can crush and mar our bliss both by the pain they cause and by the hindrance they offer to many activities. Yet nevertheless even in adversity nobility shines through, when a man endures repeated and severe misfortune with patience, not owing to insensibility but from generosity and greatness of soul.

  Aristotle

  Crush, Pain, Adversity

  Aristotle (1996). “The Nicomachean Ethics”, p.19, Wordsworth Editions

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• It is clear that those constitutions which aim at the common good are right, as being in accord with absolute justice; while those which aim only at the good of the rulers are wrong.

  Aristotle

  Justice, Political, Common

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• The man with a host of friends who slaps on the back everybody he meets is regarded as the friend of nobody.

  Aristotle

  Men, Host, Popularity

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

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• Every art and every inquiry, and similarly every action and pursuit, 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

  Inquiry, Pursuit, Aim

  "The Essential Aristotle".

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• While most of those who hold that the whole heaven is finite say that the earth lies at the center, the philosophers of Italy, the so-called Pythagoreans, assert the contrary. They say that in the middle there is fire, and that the earth is one of the stars, and by its circular motion round the center produces night and day.

  Aristotle

  Stars, Lying, Night

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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

  Beauty, Beautiful, Confused

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• Sophocles said he drew men as they ought to be, and Euripides as they were.

  Aristotle

  Men, Said, Ought

  Aristotle (1951). “Aristotle on the Art of Poetry”, p.54, Library of Alexandria

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• Everyone honors the wise.

  Aristotle

  Wise, Honor

  Plato, Aristotle (2012). “Gorgias and Rhetoric”, p.234, Hackett Publishing

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• In the perfect state the good man is absolutely the same as the good citizen; whereas in other states the good citizen is only good relatively to his own form of government.

  Aristotle

  Men, Perfect, Good Man

  Aristotle, Stephen Everson (1996). “Aristotle: The Politics and the Constitution of Athens”, p.102, Cambridge University Press

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• If then, as we say, good craftsmen look to the mean as they work, and if virtue, like nature, is more accurate and better than any form of art, it will follow that virtue has the quality of hitting the mean. I refer to moral virtue [not intellectual], for this is concerned with emotions and actions, in which one can have excess or deficiency or a due mean.

  Aristotle

  Art, Mean, Intellectual

  Aristotle (1996). “The Nicomachean Ethics”, p.40, Wordsworth Editions

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• Anything that we have to learn to do we learn by the actual doing of it; People become builders by building and instrumentalists by playing instruments. Similarily, we become just by performing just acts, temperate by performing temperate ones, brave by performing brave ones.

  Aristotle

  Education, School, People

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• The brave man, if he be compared with the coward, seems foolhardy; and, if with the foolhardy man, seems a coward.

  Aristotle

  Men, Brave, Coward

  Aristotle (1869). “The Nicomachean Ethics of Aristotle”, p.54

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• How many a dispute could have been deflated into a single paragraph if the disputants had dared to define their terms

  Aristotle

  Argument, Disputes, Term

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• When people are friends, they have no need of justice, but when they are just, they need friendship in addition.

  Aristotle

  Friendship, People, Justice

  Aristotle, Robert C. Bartlett, Susan D. Collins (2012). “Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics”, p.164, University of Chicago Press

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• Adventure is worthwhile.

  Aristotle

  Inspirational, Travel, Adventure

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• Thinking is different from perceiving and is held to be in part imagination, in part judgment

  Aristotle

  Thinking, Imagination, Soul

  Aristotle, Aeterna Press (2015). “On the Soul”, p.66, Aeterna Press

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• 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

  Philosophical, Men, Uprising

  Aristotle (2013). “The Essential Aristotle”, p.323, Simon and Schuster

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• So virtue is a purposive disposition, lying in a mean that is relative to us and determined by a rational principle, and by that which a prudent man would use to determine it. It is a mean between two kinds of vice, one of excess and the other of deficiency.

  Aristotle

  Lying, Mean, Men

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