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


If there is some end of the things we do, which we desire for its own sake, clearly this must be the good. Will not knowledge of it, then, have a great influence on life? Shall we not, like archers who have a mark to aim at, be more likely to hit upon what we should? If so, we must try, in outline at least, to determine what it is.

ARISTOTLE

Nicomachean Ethics


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


Nobility and worth are to be found only among the few, but their opposite among the many; for there is not one man of merit and high spirit in a hundred, while there are many destitute of both to be found everywhere.

ARISTOTLE

attributed, Day's Collacon

Tags: nobility


Those who assert that the mathematical sciences say nothing of the beautiful or the good are in error. For these sciences say and prove a great deal about them; if they do not expressly mention them, but prove attributes which are their results or definitions, it is not true that they tell us nothing about them. The chief forms of beauty are order and symmetry and definiteness, which the mathematical sciences demonstrate in a special degree.

ARISTOTLE

Metaphysics

Tags: math


Wickedness is nourished by lust.

ARISTOTLE

attributed, Day's Collacon

Tags: lust


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


Happiness, whether consisting in pleasure or virtue, or both, is more often found with those who are highly cultivated in their minds and in their character, and have only a moderate share of external goods, than among those who possess external goods to a useless extent but are deficient in higher qualities.

ARISTOTLE

Politics

Tags: happiness


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


Piety requires us to honor truth above our friends.

ARISTOTLE

Nicomachean Ethics

Tags: piety


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


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


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


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

ARISTOTLE

Politics

Tags: money


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


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

ARISTOTLE

Poetics

Tags: writing


Children ... are unripe and imperfect; their virtues, therefore, are to be considered not merely as relative to their actual state, but principally in reference to that maturity and perfection to which nature has destined them.

ARISTOTLE

Politics

Tags: children


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


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


Poetry demands a man with a special gift for it, or else one with a touch of madness in him.

ARISTOTLE

Poetics

Tags: poetry, madness