Quotes from Aristotle

What makes a man a 'sophist' is not his faculty, but his moral purpose. (1355b 17)

Even when laws have been written down, they ought not always to remain unaltered.

Anything whose presence or absence makes no discernible difference is no essential part of the whole.

The man who shuns and fears everything and stands up to nothing becomes a coward; the man who is afraid of nothing at all, but marches up to every danger becomes foolhardy. Similarly the man who indulges in pleasure and refrains from none becomes licentious (akolastos); but if a man behaves like a boor (agroikos) and turns his back on every pleasure, he is a case of insensibility. Thus temperance and courage are destroyed by excess and deficiency and preserved by the mean.

Republics decline into democracies and democracies degenerate into despotisms.

It is well said, then, that it is by doing just acts that the just man is produced, and by doing temperate acts the temperate man; without doing these no one would have even a prospect of becoming good.

A courageous person is one who faces fearful things as he ought and as reason directs for the sake of what is noble.

Choice, not chance, determines your destiny.

Justice is the loveliest and health is the best, but the sweetest to obtain is the heart's desire.

No excellent soul is exempt from a mixture of madness. - Aristotle (Attributed by Seneca in Moral Essays, De Tranquillitate Animi On Tranquility of Mind, sct. 17, subsct. 10.)

We become just by the practice of just actions, self-controlled by exercising self-control, and courageous by performing acts of courage.

There is a foolish corner in the brain of the wisest man.

We Can't learn without pain.

The greatest virtues are those which are most useful to other persons.

In a democracy the poor will have more power than the rich, because there are more of them, and the will of the majority is supreme. & It is also in the interests of a tyrant to keep his people poor, so that they may not be able to afford the cost of protecting themselves by arms and be so occupied with their daily tasks that they have no time for rebellion.

For the essence of a riddle is to express true facts under impossible combinations.

bad men... aim at getting more than their share of advantages, while in labor and public service they fall short of their share; and each man wishing for advantage to himself criticizes his neighbor and stands in his way; for if people do not watch it carefully the common weal is soon destroyed. The result is that they are in a state of faction, putting compulsion on each other but unwilling themselves to do what is just.

History describes what has happened, poetry what might. Hence poetry is something more philosophic and serious than history; for poetry speaks of what is universal, history of what is particular.

The Ideal age for marriage in men is 35. The Ideal age for marriage in women is 18

It is unbecoming for young men to utter maxims.

All human happiness or misery takes the form of action; the end for which we live is a certain kind of action.

For the activity of the mind is life

Wretched, ephemeral race, children of chance and tribulation, why do you force me to tell you the very thing which it would be most profitable for you not to hear? The very best thing is utterly beyond your reach: not to have been born, not to be, to be nothing. However, the second best thing for you is: to die soon

A tyrant must put on the appearance of uncommon devotion to religion. Subjects are less apprehensive of illegal treatment from a ruler whom they consider to be God-fearing and pious.