Quotes from Aristotle

A friend is a second self, so that our consciousness of a friend's existence...makes us more fully conscious of our own existence.

With the truth, all given facts harmonize; but with what is false, the truth soon hits a wrong note.

It is also in the interests of the tyrant to make his subjects poor... the people are so occupied with their daily tasks that they have no time for plotting.

We give up leisure in order that we may have leisure, just as we go to war in order that we may have peace.

It is simplicity that makes the uneducated more effective than the educated when addressing popular audiences.

It is absurd to hold that a man should be ashamed of an inability to defend himself with his limbs, but not ashamed of an inability to defend himself with speech and reason; for the use of rational speech is more distinctive of a human being than the use of his limbs.

We must not listen to those who advise us 'being men to think human thoughts, and being mortal to think mortal thoughts' but must put on immortality as much as possible and strain every nerve to live according to that best part of us, which, being small in bulk, yet much more in its power and honour surpasses all else.

Choice not chance determines your destiny [my family motto...credited to Aristotle]

The least deviation from truth will be multiplied later.

The guest will judge better of a feast than the cook

He who hath many friends hath none.

There is an ideal of excellence for any particular craft or occupation; similarly there must be an excellent that we can achieve as human beings. That is, we can live our lives as a whole in such a way that they can be judged not just as excellent in this respect or in that occupation, but as excellent, period. Only when we develop our truly human capacities sufficiently to achieve this human excellent will we have lives blessed with happiness.

The life of money-making is one undertaken under compulsion, and wealth is evidently not the good we are seeking; for it is merely useful and for the sake of something else.

It is not once nor twice but times without number that the same ideas make their appearance in the world.

the greater the number of owners, the less the respect for common property. People are much more careful of their personal possessions than of those owned communally; they exercise care over common property only in so far as they are personally affected.

The greatest thing by far is to be a master of metaphor; it is the one thing that cannot be learnt from others; and it is also a sign of genius, since a good metaphor implies an intuitive perception of the similarity in the dissimilar.

Those who cannot bravely face danger are the slaves of their attackers.

The investigation of the truth is in one way hard, in another easy. An indication of this is found in the fact that no one is able to attain the truth adequately, while, on the other hand, no one fails entirely, but everyone says something true about the nature of all things, and while individually they contribute little or nothing to the truth, by the union of all a considerable amount is amassed.

Virtue lies in our power, and similarly so does vice; because where it is in our power to act, it is also in our power not to act...

Distance does not break off the friendship absolutely, but only the activity of it.

At his best, man is the noblest of all animals; separated from law and justice he is the worst.

A beginning is that which does not itself follow anything by causal necessity, but after which something naturally is or comes to be. An end, on the contrary, is that which itself naturally follows some other thing, either by necessity, or as a rule, but has nothing following it. A middle is that which follows something as some other thing follows it. A well constructed plot, therefore, must neither begin nor end at haphazard, but conform to these principles.

Happiness does not lie in amusement; it would be strange if one were to take trouble and suffer hardship all one's life in order to amuse oneself

and poverty is the parent of revolution and crime.