Aristotle's phrases, famous quotes and aphorisms of this philosopher and scientist of ancient Greece, who together with his teacher Plato and Socrates is considered one of the fathers of philosophy.
Aristotle Quotes
- The purpose of art is to give body to the secret essence of things, not to copy its appearance.
- Philosophy is the science of being as being.
- All human actions have one or more of these seven causes: chance, nature, compulsion, habit, reason, passion and desire.
- The beauty of the soul shines when a man seriously endures one heavy misfortune after another, not because he does not feel them, but because he is a man of elevated and heroic temper.
- Selfishness is not love of oneself, but a disordered passion for oneself.
- Friendship is a single soul that lives in two bodies, a heart that beats in two souls.
- The old are twice children.
- Men began to philosophize, now as in the beginning, because of wonder: while at first they were amazed at the simplest difficulties, later, progressing gradually, they came to face ever greater problems.
- Dignity does not consist in possessing honors, but in the awareness of deserving them.
- The sage does not say everything he thinks, but thinks everything he says.
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- The essence of infinity is deprivation: not perfection, but the absence of limit.
- All other sciences will be more necessary than philosophy, but none higher.
- Youth is easily deceived because it is quick to hope.
- Philosophy is useless, you will say; but know that precisely because without the bond of servitude it is the noblest knowledge.
- The case is the unordered, i.e. fortuitous, encounter of multiple independent random lines.
- The antidote for fifty enemies is a friend.
- Bad luck reveals those who are not actually friends, but who have been friends only out of interest: time detects both.
- Beauty is the best letter of recommendation for a woman.
- What advantage do liars have? That when they tell the truth they are not believed.
- Anyone who has never learned to obey cannot be a good commander.
- Culture is an ornament in good fortune but a refuge in the adverse.
- If there is a solution, why do you worry? If there is no solution, why do you worry?
- The wise learn many things from his enemies.
- Who reads knows a lot; the viewer knows much more.
- Everyone judges well what they know, and this is the only good judge.
- Honest and intelligent people hardly make a revolution because they are always in the minority.
- The purpose of art is not to represent the external aspect of things, but their internal meaning.
- Man is by nature a social animal. Therefore men desire to live with others, even when they do not need mutual help.
- You don't have to be friends as if you were to become enemies, but rather to be enemies as if you were to become friends.
- The roots of culture are bitter, but the fruits are sweet.
- Happiness does not consist in pastimes and amusements, but in virtuous activities.
- Even when the laws are written they should never remain unchanged.
- Melancholy men are among the most witty.
- Anyone who is unable to live in society, or does not need it because it is sufficient for himself, must be either a beast or a God.
- Nature does nothing useless.
Aristotle Aphorisms
- All human actions have one or more of these seven causes: chance, nature, compulsion, habit, reason, passion and desire.
- If for a man there was nothing pleasant or any difference between one thing and another, that man would be very far from being truly a man.
- Perfect people don't fight, don't lie, don't make mistakes and don't exist.
- Poetry is something more philosophical and higher than history; poetry tends rather to represent the universal, history the particular.
- Think like wise men, but talk like ordinary people.
- It has been rightly said that the good is what everything tends to.
- Study is the best retirement provision.
- The smallest initial deviation from the truth multiplies, as it proceeds, a thousand times as much.
- There are three types of friendship: friendship based on pleasure; interest-based friendship; friendship based on goodness.
- The mathematical sciences in particular show order, symmetry and limit: and these are the greatest instances of beauty.
- There is no great genius without a dose of madness.
- Moral excellence is the result of habit. We become righteous by doing righteous actions, tempering by taking temperate, courageous actions, by carrying out courageous actions.
- Revolutions do not concern small issues, but arise from small issues and bring into play big issues.
- Our character is the result of our conduct.
- By contemplating the passions of others in comedy and tragedy, we block our passions, make them more measured, and purify them.
- The proverb is a remnant of ancient philosophy, preserved among many ruins for its brevity and opportunity.
- It is good, in life as at a banquet, not to get up neither thirsty nor drunk.
- There are two things that more than any other cause men to worry and love: their property and their affections.
- Every human being is procreated with a range of unique potentials that yearn to be fulfilled as the acorn wishes to become the oak within it.
- Men create gods in their own image, not only with regard to their form, but also to their way of life.
- The fact of being rich is, in general, more in using than in possessing: and in fact wealth is making the goods act and use them.
- It is in the nature of the desire not to be satisfied, and most men live only to satisfy it.
- It is necessary to prefer the sovereignty of the law to that of one of its citizens.
- It seems that ambition makes many people want to be loved rather than love others.
- Who has many friends has no friends.
- Either one must philosophize or one must not: but to decide not to philosophize it is still necessary to philosophize; therefore in any case, philosophizing is necessary.
- The wise man does not seek happiness but the absence of pain.
- Without cause or principle it is impossible that anything exists or is done.
- You quickly decide to be friends, but friendship is a fruit that matures slowly.
- Moral excellence is the result of habit. We become righteous by doing righteous actions, tempering by taking temperate, courageous actions, by carrying out courageous actions.
- Without friends nobody would choose to live, even if he owned all the other goods.
- Each virtue consists in the best disposition and the best disposition is towards what is best, and what is best is the mediumness between excess and defect.
- The inferior rebel to be equal and the equal to be superior. This is the mood from which revolutions are born.
- God is too perfect to think of anything but himself.
- After mating, every animated being is sad.
Aristotle phrases
- The purpose of the job is to earn free time.
- The poet should prefer probable impossibilities to improbable possibilities.
- Is it not true that it is not at all strange that friendships based on utility and pleasure are dissolved when you no longer have these advantages? And of those advantages that you were friends: those who have ceased, it is natural that you no longer love each other.
- Plato is my friend, but the truth is more my friend.
- He is necessarily in a better position to judge the one who has listened to the opposite reasons, as in a trial.
- Happiness belongs to those who are sufficient for themselves.
- Loving means wanting for a person things that are considered good because of them and not for themselves, and being ready to do these things according to their possibilities.
- Happiness is not in goods outside of us.
- I consider more valiant the one who overpowers his desires than the one who conquers his enemies; because the toughest victory is against yourself.
- Hope is the dream of those who are awake.
- The error occurs in many ways, while being upright is only possible in one way.
- Wisdom is imperative, because its purpose is to determine what should and should not be done.
- It is easy to do a good deed, but it is not easy to acquire a consolidated habit in performing these actions.
- Knowing yourself is the principle of all wisdom.
- It is simplicity that makes a poorly educated person more effective than a learned one when addressing a popular audience.
- Young people are not suspicious, because they haven't seen much harm yet.They are confident, because they have not yet had time to be deceived.
- As, when perfect, man is the best of creatures, so too, when he detaches himself from law and justice, he is the worst of all.
- Fear is the pain that arises from the anticipation of evil.
- Common to democracy, to the oligarchy, (to the monarchy) and to each constitution is the need to take care that no one rises in power enough to overcome the right measure.
- A tall stature is essential for beauty; small people can have grace and elegance, but not beauty.
- A plausible absurdity is always better than a possibility that does not convince.
- Intelligence does not consist only in knowledge, but also in the ability to apply knowledge to practice.
- The state of the stars, compared to man, would be painful if the excellence of the soul were denied to it and attributed instead to ants, cockroaches or herbs.
- The eyes are the abode of shame.
- Those who have decided to do harm do not find it difficult to find an excuse to do it.
- Those who have in mind to occupy the highest positions of government must possess three qualities: firstly, attachment to the established constitution, secondly a great capacity in government actions, thirdly virtue and justice.
- Modesty cannot be a virtue, because it looks more like suffering than quality.
- Man was born for two things, to understand and to act, as if he were a mortal god.
- All paid jobs absorb and degrade the mind.
- If love prevailed on earth, all laws would be superfluous.
- It is the sign of an educated mind to rest satisfied with the degree of precision admitted by the nature of the subject and not to seek accuracy when only an approximation of the truth is possible.
- Tyrants surround themselves with bad men because they like to be flattered and no man of high spirit will flatter them.
- A state is governed better by a good man than good laws.
- The multitude obeys more than necessity rather than reason, and punishments more than honor.
- One loves what is striking and one is struck by what is not ordinary.
