Quotes from Aristotle

It is therefore not of small moment whether we are trained from adulthood in one set of habits or another; on the contrary it is of very great, or rather supreme importance.

We praise a man who feels angry on the right grounds and against the right persons and also in the right manner at the right moment and for the right length of time.

Anyone who has no need of anybody but himself is either a beast or a God.

Moral virtue is the quality of acting in the best way in relation to pleasures and pains, and that vice is the opposite.

Jealousy is both reasonable and belongs to reasonable men, while envy is base and belongs to the base, for the one makes himself get good things by jealousy, while the other does not allow his neighbor to have them through envy.

A well constructed plot should, therefore, be single in its issue, rather than double as some maintain. The change of fortune should be not from bad to good, but, reversely, from good to bad.

The most hated sort, and with the greatest reason, is usury, which makes a gain out of money itself, and not from the natural object of it. For money was intended to be used in exchange, but not to increase at interest. And this term interest, which means the birth of money from money, is applied to the breeding of money because the offspring resembles the parent. Wherefore of all modes of getting wealth this is the most unnatural.

If we ought to philosophize we ought to philosophize, and if we ought not to philosophize we ought to philosophize ; in either case, therefore, we ought to philosophize. For if philosophy exists we ought certainly to philosophize, because philosophy exists ; and if it does not exist, even so we ought to examine why it does not exist, and in examining this we shall be philosophizing, because examination is what makes philosophy.

since we are most strongly convinced when we suppose anything to have been demonstrated; that rhetorical demonstration is an enthymeme

All human actions have one or more of these seven causes; chance, nature, compulsion, habit, reason, passion, and desire.

Dialectic as a whole, or of one of its parts, to consider every kind of syllogism in a similar manner, it is clear that he who is most capable of examining the matter and forms of a syllogism will be in the highest degree a master of rhetorical argument, if to this he adds a knowledge of the subjects with which enthymemes deal and the differences between them and logical syllogisms.

Hence, in a constitutional government the fighting-men have the supreme power, and those who possess arms are the citizens

wherefore one who divines well in regard to the truth will also be able to divine well in regard to probabilities. It

Excellence is not an act, but habit.

I have spoken, you have heard, you have the facts, judge

Nevertheless, Rhetoric is useful, because the true and the just are naturally superior to their opposites, so that, if decisions are improperly made, they must owe their defeat to their own advocates; which is reprehensible.

even if we possessed the most accurate scientific knowledge, we should not find it easy to persuade them by the employment of such knowledge. For scientific discourse is concerned with instruction, but in the case of such persons instruction is impossible; our proofs and arguments must rest on generally accepted principles, as we said in the Topics, when speaking of converse with the multitude.

not that we should do both (for one ought not to persuade people to do what is wrong), but that the real state of the case may not escape us, and that we ourselves may be able to counteract false arguments, if another makes an unfair use of them.

However, it is not the same with the subject matter, but, generally speaking, that which is true and better is naturally always easier to prove and more likely to persuade.

It is thus evident that Rhetoric does not deal with any one definite class of subjects, but, like Dialectic, [is of general application]; also, that it is useful; and further, that its function is not so much to persuade, as to find out in each case the existing means of persuasion.

For instance, it is not the function of medicine to restore a patient to health, but only to promote this end as far as possible; for even those whose recovery is impossible may be properly treated.

But there is a difference: in Rhetoric, one who acts in accordance with sound argument, and one who acts in accordance with moral purpose,are both called rhetoricians; but in Dialectic it is the moral purpose that makes the sophist, the dialectician being one whose arguments rest, not on moral purpose but on the faculty. Let

we cannot be prudent without being good.

the fact that it took the rise of democracies and otherwise open societies at Athens and elsewhere to create the climate in which public eloquence became a political indispensability.