ARISTOTLE QUOTES VIII

Greek philosopher (384 B.C. - 322 B.C.)

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

ARISTOTLE

Politics

Tags: law


Communities could not subsist without foresight to discern, as well as exertion to effectuate the measures requisite for their safety. Men capable of discerning those measures, are made for authority; and men merely capable of effectuating them by bodily labor, are made for obedience.

ARISTOTLE

Politics

Tags: authority


Comedy is, as we have said, an imitation of characters of a lower type--not, however, in the full sense of the word bad, the ludicrous being merely a subdivision of the ugly.

ARISTOTLE

Poetics


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.

ARISTOTLE

On the Vital Principle


The Plot, then, is the first principle, and, as it were, the soul of a tragedy.

ARISTOTLE

Poetics

Tags: writing


Nature flies from the infinite, for the infinite is unending or imperfect, and Nature ever seeks to amend.

ARISTOTLE

On the Generation of Animals

Tags: nature


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.

ARISTOTLE

Poetics

Tags: playwriting


A family, to be complete, must consist of freemen and slaves; and as every complex object naturally resolves itself into simple elements, we must consider the elements of a family--the master and servant, the husband and wife, the father and children; what all of these are in themselves, and what are the relations which they naturally and properly bear to each other.

ARISTOTLE

Politics

Tags: family


Most of the things about which we make decisions, and into which therefore we inquire, present us with alternative possibilities.

ARISTOTLE

Rhetoric

Tags: opinion


Whether government be a good or a bad thing, it is fair that men of equal abilities and virtues should equally share in it; that they should receive the advantage of it as their right, or bear the burden of it as their duty.

ARISTOTLE

Politics

Tags: government


The majority of mankind would seem to be beguiled into error by pleasure, which, not being really a good, yet seems to be so. So that they indiscriminately choose as good whatsoever gives them pleasure, while they avoid all pain alike as evil.

ARISTOTLE

Nicomachean Ethics

Tags: pleasure


Neglect of an effective birth control policy is a never-failing source of poverty which, in turn, is the parent of revolution and crime.

ARISTOTLE

Politics

Tags: birth control


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

ARISTOTLE

Politics

Tags: money


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.

ARISTOTLE

Rhetoric


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

ARISTOTLE

Nicomachean Ethics

Tags: pleasure


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

ARISTOTLE

Politics

Tags: money


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

ARISTOTLE

Nicomachean Ethics

Tags: virtue


Tragedy, then, is an imitation of an action that is serious, complete, and of a certain magnitude; in language embellished with each kind of artistic ornament, the several kinds being found in separate parts of the play in the form of action, not of narrative; through pity and fear effecting the proper purgation of these emotions.

ARISTOTLE

Poetics


Objects which in themselves we view with pain, we delight to contemplate when reproduced with minute fidelity: such as the forms of the most ignoble animals and of dead bodies.

ARISTOTLE

Poetics


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.

ARISTOTLE

Nicomachean Ethics

Tags: money, wealth