Quotes from Aristotle

The law itself is accused of iniquity, and impeached, like the orators of Athens when they have persuaded the assembly to pass unjust decrees.

There are, then, these three means of effecting persuasion. The man who is to be in command of them must, it is clear, be able (1) to reason logically, (2) to understand human character and goodness in their various forms, and (3) to understand the emotions--that is, to name them and describe them, to know their causes and the way in which they are excited.

There are, then, three states of mind ... two vices--that of excess, and that of defect; and one virtue--the mean; and all these are in a certain sense opposed to one another; for the extremes are not only opposed to the mean, but also to one another; and the mean is opposed to the extremes.

For in man, and in man alone, owing to is erect attitude, the upper part of the body is turned toward the upper part of the universe; while in other animals it is turned neither to this nor to the lower aspects, but in a direction midway between the two.

Thought is required wherever a statement is proved, or, it may be, a general truth enunciated.

Dramatic action, therefore, is not with a view to the representation of character: character comes in as subsidiary to the actions. Hence the incidents and the plot are the end of a tragedy; and the end is the chief thing of all.

We ought to be able to persuade on opposite sides of a question; as also we ought in the case of arguing by syllogism: not that we should practice both, for it is not right to persuade to what is bad; but in order that the bearing of the case may not escape us, and that when another makes an unfair use of these reasonings, we may be able to solve them.

To those who cite the disreputable sorts of pleasure one may fairly reply that these are not really pleasant. For we ought not, because they are pleasant to the wrongly disposed, to think they are generally pleasant, or to any but these; just as things that are wholesome or sweet or bitter to the sick, are not so to all, and as things are not really white that seem so to those suffering from opthalmia.

Tragedy--as also Comedy--was at first mere improvisation.

Were part of the human race to be arrayed in that splendor of beauty which beams from the statues of gods, universal consent would acknowledge the rest of mankind naturally formed to be their slaves.

Government and subjection, then, are things useful and necessary; they prevail everywhere, in animated as well as in brute matter; from their first origin, some natures are formed to command, and others to obey; the kinds of government and subjection varying with the differences of their objects, but all equally useful for their respective ends.

Once dialogue had come in, Nature herself discovered the appropriate measure. For the iambic is, of all measures, the most colloquial.

Money ... is founded merely on convention; its currency and value depending on the mutable wills of men.

The wickedness of man is boundless; it seems at first as if a trifle would content him, but his passions invigorate by gratification; always indulged, always craving, and continually preying on him who feeds him.

But tangible differ from visible and sonorous impressions, in that the latter are perceived by the medium acting in some way upon us, while the former are perceived, not by, but together with, the medium, like a man who is struck through his shield--for it is not the shield which, having been struck, strikes him, but the shield and he are simultaneously struck together.

If you string together a set of speeches expressive of character, and well finished in point of diction and thought, you will not produce the essential tragic effect nearly so well as with a play which, however deficient in these respects, yet has a plot and artistically constructed incidents.

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 speach and reason, when the use of rational speech is more distinctive of a human being than the use of his limbs.

To some writers, nothing appears of so much consequence as the skillful regulation of property; because it is this much coveted object that gives birth to most disputes and most seditions.

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

Without virtue it is difficult to bear gracefully the honors of fortune.

But the merchant, if faithful to his principles, always employs his money reluctantly for any other purpose than that of augmenting itself.

For pleasure is a state of soul, and to each man that which he is said to be a lover of is pleasant.

Now ends clearly differ from one another. For, firstly, in some cases the end is an act, while in others it is a material result beyond and besides that act. And, where the action involves any such end beyond itself, this end is of necessity better than is the act by which it is produced.

Since the objects of imitation are men in action, and these men must be either of a higher or a lower type (for moral character mainly answers to these divisions, goodness and badness being the distinguishing marks of moral differences), it follows that we must represent men either as better than in real life, or as worse, or as they are.